財務管理系統外文翻譯(編輯修改稿)

　

【文章內容簡介】 ccurate records are: ? there is a legal obligation to do so。 ? any shareholders may want accounts。 ? the VAT inspectors will need them。 ? HM Revenue and Customs will require them。 ? potential suppliers may require them。 ? you will need to report accurate figures to your stakeholders。 ? you will need to identify areas of possible concern。 and, ? you will need to investigate and explain variances (under or overspends against your budget). Accounting records will need to be detailed enough for you to be able to say at any one time what the financial position is。 ie, how much cash is in the business or the budget? How much do you owe? How much is owed to you? How big is the overdraft (or overspend)? How long could bills be paid for if cash stopped flowing in? What is the profit margin? Financial control will be poor if there are no clear objectives and a lack of knowledge of the basic information necessary to run a business or department successfully. A lack of appreciation of the cash needs for a given rate of activity and a tendency to assume that poor results stem from economic conditions or even bad luck will only exacerbate the situation. Accounting centres One way of delegating financial responsibility is to set up a system of accounting centres. Where businesses make a range of products, putting each into a different accounting centre makes it easier to determine which of the products are profitable. Some costs (eg factory rent) are more difficult to allocate, so may be recorded in a holding account and then split between products. Indirect costs could be allocated by the proportion of sales represented by each product (by volume or cost), by proportion of machine time used, or by some other appropriate method. This split will give an indication of the profitability of each product, but you should beware of ceasing sales of a particular product because of low profit or loss the costs currently charged to that accounting centre would have to be redistributed among those remaining, so necessitating increased sales of those products. There are four possible levels of financial responsibility with appropriate targets and control requirements: ? revenue centre staff only have responsibility for ine (eg a sales department in a store). Staff have sales targets against which ine is measured and pared。 ? cost centre staff have responsibility for keeping costs within set targets, but do not have to worry about where the money es from (eg an NHS Trust department)。 ? profit centre staff have more responsibility and control and will agree targets of profitability and absolute levels of profit (eg a division within a larger pany). Control is achieved through monitoring performance as measured by the profit and loss account (Pamp。L)。 they are unable, however, to invest in new equipment。 and, ? investment centre the staff have authority over investments and the use of assets (eg a subsidiary pany) although the holding pany would typically need to approve major investment. Targets would focus on return on capital and control would be through monitoring performance measured by the plete accounts. 2 Management Information Systems If your financial control is to be effective you need to regularly analyse your actual performance figures and pare them against the financial plan and, perhaps, performance of the business histo