Responsibility accounting systems include "budgets, quotas,
schedules, standard costs, and quality standards; reports comparing
actual and planned performance; and procedures for investigating
and correcting significant variances" (Romney). Further by definition,
responsibility accounting can be defined as a system of reporting
financial results on the basis of managerial responsibilities within an
organization. I utilize this type of system monthly in my job at Tyson
regarding fixed assets. We use SAP S4 Hana as our ERP. I break our
activity into monthly "chunks", which we call periods. For each
period, once it's "closed", I run reports from SAP to specifically take a
look at all of our asset acquisitions. I put together reports for these
acquisitions to ensure we have assigned them the correct class, g/l
account number, depreciation key and life, and if any bonus
depreciation is allowed to be taken on the asset. Specifically in my
case, when we assign an asset a certain class and depreciation
life/key, the system {SAP} should assign it the proper depreciation
amount based on those indicators. However, sometimes this does
not happen, so that's why I check each period to ensure that if I'm
expecting an asset to take 100% bonus depreciation, that it has done
so, etc. Also, if it's a land asset or something of the like, those aren't
depreciable, so I have to ensure those are properly treated. This
process falls in line with what the textbooks exemplifies as
responsibility accounting because I run a schedule and compare the
actual and planned depreciation, and I have procedures that I
perform to investigate and then correct, if needed, any variances.
This information is used by management, and more specifically our
tax department, when making decisions on how much depreciation
we are expecting in future quarters to properly calculate estimated
Federal and State Income Tax estimated payments. Management,
and more specifically our business units and plants, know how much
of their capital budget they have spent on acquisitions every period
and the depreciation expected from those acquisitions. This is
necessary for budgeting purposes.
References
Romney, Marshall, B. et al.
Accounting Information Systems
.
Available from: MBS Direct, (15th Edition). Pearson Education (US),
2020.
