Burgess Manuscripts
TrueValueMetrics
ACTION INFORMATION FOR ALL OF SOCIETY
Metrics about the State, Progress and Performance of Society, the Environment and Economy
Metrics about Impact on People, Place, Planet and Profit
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Chapter 5
ACCOUNTING'S KEY CONCEPTS
5-6 QUANTIFYING VALUE
The sector perspective should not be ignored ... ... ...
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Standards
Standard Costing
The techniques of standard costing can be used in TVM Value Accountancy as they are in
corporate accountancy. A standard is what might be expected ... compared to an actual which is
what actually happened. There are many ways in which the comparison between actual and
standard can be made ... the aim of analytical accountancy is for this comparison to improve
understanding the most and cost the least.
Useless ... or valuable
Standards may be thought of as being fixed and arbitrary and useless ... or they may be used as a
very powerful tool for understanding a lot of complex material in an efficient way. In this latter
mode standards come alive. They start off being the best that can be ... best in the sense of
reflecting the best data that are accessible ... and then they improve as better data becomes
available and is made accessible.
Standard cost
Standard cost accounting helps cost accountants measure cost performance without getting
deeply buried in detail. Standard costs are the theoretical cost of an item or service
Standard, actual, variance
The comparison of standard with actual alerts a cost accountant to something that is different and
helps put the focus of effort onto something that is out of the ordinary. If actual costs are
different from standard costs, then it is time to find out why.
Standard values
The same approach is used for value as for cost. Every activity produces something ... what is the
standard value of this output? This can be determined in an arbitrary manner, and then it can be
used in an analytical framework, and compared to alternative values that are justified from
different other perspectives.
Being fooled
My understanding is that a money instrument that pays 14% will have one value, and
that a money instrument that pays 7% will have a substantially lesser value.
In the 1980s and 1990s the US banking industry replaced high yield mortgages with
low yield mortgages ... and reported huge profits as they did this. How could this be?
We were being fooled then ... just as the fooling continues to this day. The banks
charged fees for the work of issuing new mortgages. The old mortgages were paid off
without losses. The new mortgages were bundled and sold off (securitized) ... and
though the value of these new mortgages was small relative to the old mortgages ...
the accounting for this drop in value did not appear anywhere.
Something is very wrong when an industry can do this and the system of accounting
does not show it.
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