比较美国和德国的成本核算方法【外文翻译】

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-German companies determine whether advanced costing practices such as RCA will add strategic value for their firms.

DIFFERENT CULTURES

The culture in most U.S. firms is that costing practices are just not important enough to invest heavy resources in more detailed methods. Convincing upper management to invest in more advanced methods usually requires a strong quantification of the expected benefits of those methods. Because those benefits are usually hard to quantify, the investments rarely get made. Even when firms spend millions on a new ERP system, much effort is made to minimize the expense and just try to get the new system to do essentially what the old system did. As one director of worldwide manufacturing finance responded about the possibility of implementing RCA, “It could work if operations m anagement would agree to adopt. Cultural change is the biggest issue, and it would be a major effort to change the metrics being used today.”

The Germans take a very different approach, the strong emphasis Germans tend to place on management accounting, which is known as controlling. Their answers show consistently stronger top management support for managerial accounting, pursuit of advanced cost accounting methods, and importance placed on internal decision support, planning, and control. On average, more than 40% of their accounting employees perform controlling functions compared to about 35% in the United States.

German and Japanese companies are also known for having a longer-term planning horizon than U.S. firms. This characteristic was supported by our survey of German firms, which were less likely to take a short-term view in meeting profit goals and somewhat more likely to continue offering an unprofitable product or service as long as it had a promising future.

RCA PRACTICES

In this study, we also asked companies in both countries specific questions to determine their use of costing practices commonly associated with resource consumption accounting.

CONTRIBUTION MARGIN ACCOUNTING

On the manufacturing side, the Germans are quite likely to use contribution margin (CM) accounting. Most of our German site visit firms showed us their detailed contribution margin (DB) income statement they use for most decisions. The survey results showed that 79% of the German manufacturing firms (and 60% of nonmanufacturing firms) use DB compared to 47% to 51% of U.S. firms. Several of

the manufacturing industries had 100% use of CM in Germany, while in the United States only the consulting, etc., and wholesale/retail nonmanufacturing industries had 100% usage.

VARIABLE COSTING

Closely related to contribution margin accounting is variable costing, where fixed costs are not allocated to cost objects (e.g., products, services, customers, etc.). The low percentages for German firms are surprising given the high percentage that use contribution accounting.Our site visits, however, showed that even though firms prepare detailed CM statements, certain fixed costs also are subtracted at lower levels of the statement to provide more complete segment or product margins. These fixed costs are used for some decision making as well. So it is not that German firms ignore fixed costs, but they use them only when they are relevant to the decision at hand.

NUMBER OF COST CENTERS

We found generally higher numbers of cost centers, cost pools, and cost drivers for German firms than for U.S. firms. U.S. manufacturing firms use an average of about 17 cost centers compared to 175 for German firms. Nonmanufacturing firms in both countries also tend to have more cost centers than manufacturing firms do. U.S. nonmanufacturing firms reported an average of about 44 cost centers compared to about 207 for the Germans.

Not only are the number of cost centers much higher for German firms, but these firms also tend to track more cost attributes separately within each cost center. Examples include cost behavior (fixed or variable), decision relevance, cash flow relevance, allocation level (e.g., primary or secondary cost), production cost category (e.g., strategic, idle capacity, etc.), absorbability, and production cost type (e.g., material handling, process labor, etc.). Also, the great majority of German manufacturing firms report variances for each cost center (83% versus 53% in the United States). One way in which U.S. manufacturing firms excel in cost-center accounting is that they are more likely to identify at least one output measure per resource cost center than German firms (46% versus 31%, respectively).

ACTIVITY-BASED COSTING

We did not find much difference in the percentage of firms describing their costing system as activity-based costing (ABC): 19% for the Germans and 21% for the Americans. The highest percentages came from nonmanufacturing firms: 38% in the United States and 27% in Germany. The industry groups with the highest ABC

usage were finance (50%), wholesale/retail trade (36%), and healthcare (35%). The highest manufacturing group was chemicals (23%). Although most firms don’t call their costing systems ABC, many others use activity- or process-based cost drivers. The U.S. nonmanufacturing firms (69%) and manufacturing firms (31%) tend to use ABC drivers more than German firms do (23% and 20%, respectively).

THE RCA SCORE

The results of our study show promise for RCA in the United States. We computed an RCA score for both German and U.S. firms measured by how many of the possible RCA practices are being used. The overall average scores for nonmanufacturing firms are 4.7 for German firms and 4.3 for U.S. firms. There is more disparity among the manufacturing firms with 6.0 for the Germans and 4.6 for U.S. firms.

The fact that the average RCA scores are somewhat close in the two countries is partially due to similarities in the percentage use of several costing practices between the two countries. These include using variable costing, separating variable and fixed costs for each cost center, transferring costs from support cost centers to primary cost centers while maintaining the distinction between fixed and variable costs, estimating consumption for each resource cost center, and using planned or standard costs for most costing purposes. Although the average number of practices in the two countries is in the same ballpark, the degree of using each practice is usually higher for German firms.

ON THE PLUS SIDE

Finally, we asked U.S. respondents their opinion about whether the benefits would exceed the costs of using RCA in their firm. About 13% said, yes; about 15% said, no; and the rest were not sure. Only 41% overall said they had even heard of RCA. There is clearly a need for more information and training on RCA practices as well as U.S. firms willing to try it and step out from the organizational resistance and traditions that hold them back.

On the plus side for RCA, U.S. firms commonly use several RCA practices, albeit frequently to a lesser degree than their German counterparts. But the most important factor that should make U.S. firms consider implementing more RCA practices is still the exceptionally low satisfaction U.S. firms have with their current costing systems. As we mentioned earlier, close to 80% of all German firms rated their system the overall right tool compared to less than 30% of all U.S. firms. Also,

the satisfaction ratings are higher for the Germans on almost all aspects of the costing systems we asked about. Why not consider something that works so well in Europe? The benefits of these systems are not fully appreciated until they are experienced firsthand.

译文

比较美国和德国的成本核算方法

资料来源：管理会计季刊，2007年

作者：Kip Krumwiede and Augustin Suessmair

最近我们对德国和美国的成本核算系统进行了深入研究，包括实地考察和询问同样的问题，使之能够更好的相互比较。我们来到德国进行实地考察时使我们印象深刻的不仅是他们有详细的数据，而且这些企业的管理核心都是放在管理会计信息（即“控制”）上。在美国，企业像这样重视管理会计是很少看到的，它们往往更倾向于注重企业的财务报告。凡是对所有提出与管理会计相关的信息，必须克服成本效益原则这一障碍，才会予以通过。

我们将提供详细的调查结果和实地考察信息。其结果是根据2006年1月至6月期间148个德国企业和130个美国企业的多个行业横断面调查。德国的回答是36％的企业都存在相关联系，而美国的回答是27％。总的来说，美国被访企业在销售收入方面稍高于德国（分别为2.01亿美元—2.5亿美元与1.5亿美元—2亿美元）。两个国家的制造业在产业的多样性上，美国的反应也比德国大（分别为72％与58％），其中我们也报告了他们之间的一些行业差异。

我们发现德国人更专注于先进的成本核算，与资源消耗会计（RCA）相联系。在美国，企业往往侧重于各种不同的做法。很多像这样的差异是由文化和先进的企业资源规划（ERP）系统工具造成的。以下我们将讨论他们的差异和相似性，以帮助非德国企业决定是否采用先进的成本核算如RCA来增加企业的战略价值。

文化差异

大多数美国企业注重成本核算的做法，只是没有做到用更详细的方法在资源上做大量的投资。上层管理人员对投资于先进的核算方法通常需要将这种方法的预期效益进行量化。由于这些利益通常是难以量化，所以投资很少会成功。即使企业花费数百万新的ERP系统，努力减少开支，也只是试图获得新的系统，在做法上与旧系统没有本质差别。有一财务总监对RCA实施的可能性回答说：“如

果经营管理人员同意采取的话，那么它就可以实现。最大的问题是文化的改变，所以若想改变目前使用的核算方法还需付出更大的努力。

而德国采取非常不同的方法，重点往往放在管理会计上，就是所谓的控制。他们的回答表明顶级的管理会更有力的支持管理会计，追求先进的成本核算方法，重点是放在内部决策的支持、规划和控制上。在德国平均超过40％的会计人员会履行控制功能，相比之下美国大约为35％。

德国和日本企业比美国拥有更加长远的规划。这一特征是我们在调查德国企业时所得出的结论，他们不以短期的利润为目标而是继续提供非盈利性的产品或服务直到企业拥有光明的前途。

资源消耗会计

在这项研究中，我们还问了企业一些具体问题，以确定他们的公司通常使用的成本核算方法与资源消耗会计是否相关。

边际贡献会计

在制造业方面，德国人会运用到边际贡献会计，大多数德国企业网站表明他们利用详细的边际贡献损益表来做决策。调查结果显示，79％的德国制造业（60％非制造业）使用DB而美国分别为47％和51％。德国的一些制造业100％使用边际贡献法，而在美国制造业对边际贡献会计的只有个别人询问，但批发、零售业和非制造业行业有100％的使用率。

变动成本法

与边际贡献密切相关的是变动成本法，其中固定费用未分配到成本对象中。然而结果显示，即使企业编制详细的边际贡献表，某些固定费用的扣除率仍然相对较低，这些固定费用是做更好决策用的。因此，这并不是说，德国企业忽略固定费用，只有当他们面临相关的决策时，他们才会使用固定费用。

成本中心数

我们发现德国企业在成本中心，成本库，成本驱动普遍比美国公司高。美国制造业使用的成本中心数平均为17而德国企业为175。这两个国家非制造业的成本中心往往比制造企业多。美国非制造业报告的成本中心约44而德国约207左右。

德国企业不仅在成本中心数上很高，而且这些企业也往往区别每个成本的中心的属性。例如包括成本的性态（固定或变动），决策的相关性，现金流量相关性，分配水平（例如，小学或中学的费用），生产成本类别（如战略性、闲置产能等），吸收能力，生产成本类型（例材料处理、工艺劳动等）。另外，有83％德国制造业会报告每个成本中心的差异而美国只有53％。美国制造业在成本中心会计上擅长的是，他们比德国企业更有可能确定每种资源的成本中心（分别为

46％和31％，）。

作业成本法

我们没有发现两个国家的企业在描述成本核算系统上作业成本法所占的比重有很大差别，德国占19％美国占21％。比例最高的是非制造业其中美国占38％德国占27％。各行业中作业成本法的使用量最高的是金融行业为50%，批发、零售业为36％，医疗为35％。制造业中最高的是化学品制造为23％。虽然大多数企业不会称他们的成本核算系统为作业成本法，但很多企业称为以作业和过程为基础的成本驱动方法。美国非制造业的69％和制造业的31％倾向于使用ABC，这大大超过德国的企业的使用率（分别为23％和20％，）。

RCA的前景

我们的研究结果表明在美国可能应用RCA作为新一代的成本核算方法。我们通过RCA方法应用的可能性来计算德国和美国企业应用RCA分数。非制造业的整体平均分数为德国企业4.7和美国企业4.3 ，而在制造业差距相对较大分别为6.0和 4.6 。

事实上，RCA在这两个国家的平均得分有点接近，原因是两个国家对几种成本核算方法的做法都相似。这些包括变动成本法的使用，这种成本法的中心是可分为变动成本和固定成本。当企业能够区别这两种成本，估计成本的资源消耗，使用计划或标准成本达到目的时成本中心就成为最主要的一面。虽然这两个国家的平均数是在同一个水平，但是对任何方法的使用程度通常是德国企业较高。

最后，我们问了美国受访者若在他们企业运用RCA对企业是否有利，他们的观点是约13％的人说有利，约15％的人说没有，其余的则表示不清楚。只有41％的人表示他们有听说过RCA。显然美国需要更多的信息和对RCA的培训使企业能够愿意尝试新的核算方法，并逐步从组织性和一贯性中走出来。

RCA的积极面，美国企业通常使用几种RCA的做法，虽然经常比德国同行程度较轻。但是使美国公司考虑推出更多RCA做法的最重要因素仍是美国企业对自己目前的成本核算系统的满意度极低。此外，德国人几乎对成本核算系统的所有方面满意度都较高。为什么不考虑在欧洲使用这种成本核算方法，主要原因是这些系统的好处在他们经验丰富前是不会得到充分的了解。