INTERNAL RELATIONS. 289 



RECONCILING COSTS WITH DISBURSEMENTS. 



I have vainly tried to find some simple current method of 

 reconciling the cost sheet with the cash accounts, since this would 

 establish the aggregate truth of the cost sheet before the highest 

 court of audit known to military accountability. I am convinced, 

 not only that this is impossible, unless either the papers are very 

 much complicated or unless substantial truth is neglected for the 

 sake of striking a balance ; but I also believe that the same result 

 is indirectly attainable by other means already described. 



The trouble is: 1st, that we are always paying in one month 

 for material which we expend in another; 2d, that we do not 

 necessarily expend at once all that we pay for ; 3d, that we can- 

 not always tell whether what we are expending has been paid for 

 or not, still less whether it has been paid for in the time covered 

 jointly by the two sets of accounts or previously. 



There would be no trouble in accomplishing the reconciliation 

 if material were like labor, which is expended as soon as received, 

 being therefore always a charge and never a credit, and which is 

 paid for monthly in the period covered by the joint accounts. In 

 such a case the monthly cost sheet would be a repetition of the 

 Abstract of Disbursements, having its totals under each appropria- 

 tion distributed according to a different list of agencies, the shop- 

 orders serially arranged. 



But in regard to expressing the relation between the payment 

 for material and its expenditure, the following table shows how 

 various its conditions may be : 



J 





A. Paid for in period in which expended. 



B. Not paid for as above, but 



'i. paid for previously. 

 2. paid for afterward. 



. C. Not expended in period in which paid for. 



The variety of these conditions is increased by the fact that any 

 one of them may be only true as to part of the material in ques- 



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