比较美国和德国的成本核算方法外文翻译.doc

外文翻译 原文 Comparing U.S. and German Cost Accounting Methods Material Source: management accounting quarterly Author:Kip Krumwiede and Augustin Suessmair We recently completed an in-depth study of German and U.S. costing systems, which included site visits to several firms in both countries and a detailed survey asking many of the same questions to make head-to-head comparisons. We came away from our German site visits quite impressed with not only the amount of detail but also the level of commitment these firms place on management accounting (i.e., “controlling”) information. This large emphasis placed on management accounting is rarely seen in U.S. firms, which tend to place their accounting emphasis on financial reporting. Any proposed management accounting initiative has to overcome strict cost-versus-benefit hurdles to be approved. We will provide details of our survey results and site visits. The results are based on 148 surveys from German companies and 130 from U.S. companies in a cross section of industries during January through June 2006. The German response rate was 36% of the companies contacted, and the U.S. response rate was 27%. Overall, the U.S. respondent firms were somewhat larger than the German firms in terms of sales revenue ($201 million–$250 million versus $151 million–$200 million, respectively). The two countries also varied somewhat in terms of industries represented with more U.S. responders than German responders (72% versus 58%, respectively) from manufacturing firms. We also report industry differences when applicable. We found that the Germans focus more on certain advanced costing practices often associated with what has become known as resource consumption accounting (RCA). Firms in the United States tend to focus on different practices. Many of these differences are driven by culture and more advanced implementations of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. We will discuss the differences—and similarities—in order to help non