Improved Accounting Methods for Wholesale Food Distributors

Excerpts from the report Introduction: Accounting in the wholesale food distribution business usually includes all the work necessary to maintain the general ledger, to prepare statements such as the statement of financial condition (balance sheet) and statement of income (profit and loss), to analyze sales by departments, to prepare reports on payroll and inventory for insurance purposes, and to prepare income tax reports. The man-hours required for accounting comprise a major cost in the offices of wholesalers. The accounting system in this report is designed to help wholesale food distributors to establish more accurately their costs of distribution by product sales division and by combined operations. Uniform reporting can result in improved inventory turnover and accurate reporting of financial and operating results. Concise presentation of such data provides management with information needed to effectively operate the business. The primary objectives of this study were: (1) To apply the principles of work simplification to assembling, posting, totaling, and balancing the thousands of daily transactions for accumulating and summarizing into the records of account; (2) to develop improved methods of financial reporting to management and a standard simplified procedure for maintaining the general ledger with manual methods, automatic tabulating machine methods, and electronic computers having memory units; (3) to develop a method of providing reports, as byproducts of the accounting system, on productivity in warehousing, selling, and delivery; and (4) to develop a method of accounting and account classification that can be used throughout the industry.