It is only in recent years that individual business enterprises outside of the manufacturing field have grown to such importance as to bring a large number of employes under one management. Today the problems of the office are no less urgent than those of the shop.
Office administration is in some respects like, in other respects unlike, plant management. It is alike in that it pursues the same ideals of efficiency. It is unlike in that machines and equipment fall into the background and the human element looms large in the foreground of office work.
Methods of conducting clerical work have, since the advent of the various office machines, of which the typewriter was the pioneer, undergone rapid transformation. Underlying these changes there have been principles, more or less clearly recognized, which it is the aim of the Text to discover and present in an orderly and systematic fashion.
In few departments of office work have standardized processes based upon scientific principles made such headway as in the employment field. Hiring employes for office work, training them for their duties, stimulating them to their best effort, adjusting wages to work performed, and providing for deserved promotions, are no longer casual occupations of some general offices, but the work and special concern of the trained office manager.
Here, as elsewhere, concentration and specialization are beginning to reveal the principles underlying successful effort. Such principles concern not only the operations, but the organization of the office and its various parts.
Accounting Principles
Development and scope of accountancy Accounts and their purpose Classification of accounts Double entry bookkeeping Books of account Applying accounting principles—the original entries Applying accounting principles—the ledger records Applying accounting principles—summarizing results Columnar books Opening, operating and closing the books The trial balance Economic summary The balance sheet Single entry bookkeeping Continental system of bookkeeping Depreciation Methods of computing depreciation Labor-saving devices Internal checks
As business becomes more complex we are more and more dependent upon accounting methods to show us the trend of the individual business in which we are interested.
Hence a knowledge of accounting principles is indispensable. Yet, even among experienced bookkeepers, comparatively few have a clear understanding of the principles which underlie all correct methods of keeping financial records.
This section of the Course, therefore, starts with a clear explanation of the fundamental principles of bookkeeping, and progresses step by step until it reaches the most complicated cases of partnership and corporation accounting.