1、 外文翻译 原文 Financial Control as an Aid to Management Material Source: http:/ Author: P.T.Menzies The fundamental objective of the management of every manufacturing and commercial concern must be to sell its products with the maximum profit in the long term. It is always possible to produce additional
2、profits in the short term by sacrificing long-term objectives in favor of immediate economies. However, the overall picture of profits, short- and long-term, is more important. To ensure profitability in the longer term, the manufacturer has to put him into a business in which he can reasonably expe
3、ct to be successful, to buy the materials best suited to his job, to pay the salaries and wages required to secure good employees, and to seek a satisfactory margin of profit. A manufacturer must first select or create a market for his products; he must then supply products of the right quality, at
4、the right price, and in quantities adequate to meet market requirements with the minimum overall expenditure on the three basic factors of production that is capital, materials and manpower. The purpose of financial control is to help the managers of the business at all levels to do just that. The R
5、ole of Financial Control The aim of financial control is, in the first place, to ensure that information is made available which will enable management to decide on the best course of action. It is not sufficient merely to forecast events or results it must produce an affirmative plan for the future
6、. Situations have to be created so that the maximum benefit can be derived from them and every possible improvement in performance must be used. The second aim of financial control is to see to it that divergences from plan are ascertained, corrective action applied and, if necessary, the plan adjus
7、ted. So every manufacturer who wishes to run his business successfully has first to decide upon what he is trying to do, and then to formulate a policy to achieve maximum effect in his decisions. It is most important that there should be a definite policy for the business fully understood by all its
8、 managers. A large business tends to have a considerable momentum and there can be a lag of several years between taking a decision and reaping the reward. Consequently adequate machinery must exist for Assessing the current results of decisions taken in the past, and also the likely future outcome
9、of decisions on matters presently under consideration. Making Long-Term Plans Having made the fundamental policy decisions, a manufacturer must then endeavor to gauge the probable level of demand for his products some years ahead; this must be a continuous operation. This requires long-term forecast
10、s of sales quantities by markets, and by products, or groups of products, covering a period of, say, three to five years ahead. This involves assessing the future rate of growth of the market as a whole and of the extent of the individual companys penetration of that market. In its final form, the f
11、orecast must cover separately each market, each product, and for each of the years covered by the forecast an assessment is needed of the amounts of each raw material and service used in the production which will be required to meet the sales forecast. The importance of long-term sales forecast cann
12、ot be overemphasized as it forms the basis of the plans for expansion of production resources, for planned recruitment of the staff and work-force, and for entering into contracts for the supply of essential materials and services. It is worth while spending considerable time and effort to ensure th
13、at long-term plans for sales are as accurate as it is humanly possible to make them and to see to it that the plans are accepted as realistic by all engaged in management. The profits forecast will be based on the sales quantities in the long-term sales forecast, the appropriate net sales realizatio
14、n, the estimates of raw material and service costs, and the estimates of staff and labor requirements. The cash forecast will show for each year the net cash expected to be received from sales, and the cash which will be required to meet all operating expenses such as wages and salaries, raw materia
15、ls consumed (these figures being taken from the profits forecast). It will also show the amounts required to finance capital expenditure and the increased working capital resulting from increased turnover. Finally, it will show the amount of taxation to be paid and the dividends which the shareholde
16、rs will expect to receive. In the event that there is an insufficient inflow of cash to meet requirements, consideration then has to be given as to how the company can find all the cash required to keep the business running. Each of these forecasts has to be amended for changes resulting from manage
17、ment decisions taken as the forecasts are examined. At the end of the operation, it may be that the cash forecast will show that company is likely to have cash surplus to its requirements, in which event the management can consider the possibility of investing the surplus cash provided it can do so
18、to advantage. On the other hand, and the more usual if the business is expanding, the forecast will show that there is likely to be a deficiency of cash so that the business can be carried on as planned only if some new source of cash is available. This could be an overdraft facility from a bank, or
19、 if the amount is too large for that, fresh capital raised either in the form of share capital or as loan capital. The final result of the exercise is a complete financial plan for the business for the next three to five years. And Short-Term Plans Too Although it is highly desirable to plan in gene
20、ral terms for some years ahead, there is a particular need to plan along the same lines in considerable detail for the immediate future the period most convenient for financial control purposes being the companys financial year broken up into quarterly or monthly periods. For the short period, it is
21、 desirable also to have prepared a series of calculations which show approximately the extent to which profits are moved by a number of alternative assumptions, such as a decline in the overall level of activity, rises in raw material prices or salary and wage levels, and so on. I shall deal more fu
22、lly with certain important features of short-term financial planning when I discuss budgetary control later on Realistic Planning Inevitably, every estimate when made will contain an error: the estimate of growth in future sales will follow too simple a pattern. As we well know, sales do not increas
23、e steadily from year to year. There are indeed years when business goes into a cyclical pattern and can even decline. Sales will inevitably develop according to an irregular pattern and the companys plans must to reproduce this in mathematical terms. Sales prices too are affected in a whole variety
24、of ways, not all of which are easy to foresee. On this account too a plan must be realistic. I deliberately use the word realistic. It is just as serious to under-estimate as it is to over-estimate future potential. On the production side difficulties also arise. New plant does not come into product
25、ion precisely on the expected date nor, from the time that it does come into production, does it operate steadily at a high level of efficiency. A forecast must allow for such uncertainties as can reasonably be expected to arise. What a plan must do is to seek to predict what is likely to happen and
26、 at the same time put a probability factor on every effect which may cause a deviation from that likely course of events. Monitoring Performance and Re-planning By the very nature of the changing environment as well as on account of the inevitable imperfections existing within an organization itself
27、, achievements do not match plans. This means that the financial control system must provide for monitoring performance, fixing responsibility for corrective action and, where appropriate, for adjusting the original plan or, if very radical changes are needed, for drawing up a completely new plan. T
28、he whole of the planning exercise is, therefore, a continuing one. It is not simply a question of making a plan for a period in isolation; the exercise is repeated at annual or shorter intervals. For example, towards the end of the year 1967, we were preparing plans for the three years 1968, 1969 an
29、d 1970. Then, in December 1968, that is to say one year later, in the light of the changes in circumstances occurring during 1968, we will establish new plans covering 1969,1970 and one year more, 1971. Thus we creep ahead one year at a time. As a result, we see that each financial plan is first of
30、all complete in it-self, that is a statement of our expectations and plans at the time we make it, and at the same time it is a statement of changes in our expectations and changes in our plans which we make since the last plans were prepared. Thus the planning mechanism provides a running commentar
31、y on our plans for the future and on changes in them as the present becomes history and the future gives way to the present. In this way it provides a continuous aid to management control. Budgetary Control The growth in the size and complexity of modern industrial and commercial undertakings has le
32、d, of necessity, to splitting functions and delegating authority. Such delegation relates, within limits, to establishing plans as well as to executing them and carries with it the necessity to prepare an account according to the responsibility of the individual to whom authority is delegated. The a
33、ccount which is presented compares the actual performance with the planned or budgeted performance for the period reviewed and gives the reasons for all significant differences. An effective system of budgetary control has to be tailored closely to the management structure of an organization. Manage
34、rial responsibilities in the financial sense must be clearly defined and there should be no overlapping. These responsibilities must be well understood by all concerned. The budgetary control system can then be planned in detail to accord with the chart of managerial responsibilities. Thus, there wi
35、ll be separate budgets for each department or works for which there is a separate management control and in some cases it may be appropriate to go to a level lower than this and have sectional budgets within works budgets. Broadly speaking there are two possible methods of preparing a budget. Either
36、 a chief accountant can prepare figures and have them subsequently accepted and agreed by the managers concerned, or individual managers can prepare their own budgets for the chief accountant to vet subsequently. Of the two methods, it is probably better to have each manager prepare his own budget a
37、s he is the person who should be most knowledgeable of facts and most competent to say how much his department ought to cost. Further, if he prepared his own budget he will be more ready to accept responsibility for the figures which subsequently turn up for comparison with his budget. When people t
38、alk about budgetary control they usually refer to the control of expenses. However, it is worth extending the principles of budgetary control to the control of profits. To do this some organizational changes may be needed. The sales organization may be divided into product groups and each sales mana
39、ger made responsible for a product group or business area. He then becomes responsible nor merely for sales volume and sales realizations, but for the final trading profit of his section. Profit budgets can then be prepared by these sales managers and adopted by the. Thereafter profit performance ju
40、st as performance on expenses alone can be checked. Such a system makes the managers concerned profit-conscious in the full sense of the term and not merely conscious of the volume of their business. They will have to explain all significant divergences between the actual and the budgeted profit and
41、 will be assisted in initiating the action required to correct unfavorable trends in profitability. The Costing System My comments about this further essential part of the financial mechanism must necessarily be of a very general g system must be designed specifically for the industry and the compan
42、y it is to serve. Within ICI, we cover a fair range of different industries and consequently we have many different costing systems. The system which is designed to serve the needs of the oily side of out business would be of no use to the synthetic processes of the paint industry; and we need anoth
43、er system again to cope with the situation where we have long chains of processes, the product of one process flowing as an intermediate into the next, such as we have in the dyestuffs side of our business. Standards of performance are fixed for items such as the volume of production, the usage of r
44、aw materials, raw materials prices, process times, departmental costs, and so on right through the business. Products are cost on the basis of these standards and differences between the actual cost and the standard cost are thrown up as specific variances from standard. These variances should show
45、at a glance how much of the total variation from the standard is due to each particular item, such as the use of raw materials, in process time utilized, in departmental costs, in overhead charges, and so on. The system is intended to be a guide to management and to show where to seek further inform
46、ation in order to improve performance. The effectiveness of such a system depends wholly upon the validity of the standards. Therefore, it is desirable that the standards should be carefully determined, reviewed frequently and amended whenever necessary in the light of changing circumstances. In ord
47、er that each level of management should obtain the maximum benefit from costing statements received, it is often useful to make a distinction between variable costs that is those costs or expenses, such as raw material usage, which vary significantly with output and the fixed costs such as the cost
48、of a research organizations, which in the short term remain almost unchanged over a wide range of output. The variable costs can usually be allocated to products fairly accurately and it is useful to do this in order to calculate for each product or product group a reliable figure of gross margin. S
49、uch a figure of gross margin, namely the difference between the net price and the variable unit costs of production, distribution and sale can be valuable, not only as a means of control but also in policy studies leading to pricing and output decisions. 译文 财务控制作为管理援助 资料来源 : http:/ 作者： P.T. Menzies 对 于 每一个制造和商业 的 机构 来说， 管理的基本目标必须是销售长期最大利润的产品。它总是能够在短期内产生 有 利于经济的长远目标 和 额外的利润。然而，利润的大局 、 短期和长期 是非常 重要的。为了确保长期的盈利能力，制造商投入业务，他可以合理期望获得成功，购买最适合自己的工作的材料，支付工资，并要求员工工资，以确保良好的自己，寻求满意的利润幅度。 一个制造商必 须先选择或创建一个自己的产品市场，
