Process Cost Accounting and Diagrammatical Outlines.

Abstract The article focuses on the use of diagrammatical outline method in examining process cost accounting. When studied in any reasonable depth, process cost is among the most difficult topics covered in cost accounting courses. This seeming contradiction may be traced to the student's almost universal inability to: separate relevant from irrelevant data; and to organize a maze of interrelated data into usable form. Process costing presupposes a processing-type manufacturing situation, and this type of situation is frequently complex. It is this complexity, the processing operation, not the concepts of process cost accounting that often causes difficulty for the student. One device too often overlooked by the student is the diagrammatical outline, which is really nothing more than an application of the concepts of flow charting and block diagramming used in computer programming. Because of the complexity of the manufacturing process situation and because the facts applicable to the process situation are often presented in an order which is not suitable for solution, the student should consider use of a diagram and outline combined as a method of examining the process and organizing the relevant data into usable form.