The article has presented the duties and responsibilities of the controller in connection with management's request and need for cost and economic data to plan the future and to control day-by-day activities.
The subject matter is continued in this chapter by presenting first the organizational unit : the cost department itself and its relation to other departments and functions in order to fulfill its obligations to all parties concerned. Second, the cost department is picture of the informadon system , a large data and record-keeping unit, which in turn provides past, present, and future data. Third, the discussion leads to accounting's basic information models, the balance sheet and the income statement.
Any company, with or without a cost system or cost department, will and must prepare these two financial statements at the end of the fiscal year. The system should, however, make possible the production of monthly income statements which are of utmost importance to top executives and middle management for control purposes. Such statements need comparative cost figures—planned vs. actual—to be of value. Finally, this chapter deals briefly with some planning and control devices particularly applicable for management's overall review of the company's profit goal.