The Florists' Review 



liABCH 26, 1920 





The fl ortstg wbot e cards appear on tbe pases oarrylnc fhia liead, are prepared to fin orders 

 "'"""•^r^. from otber florists for local OsUTery on tlie usual baste* — 



ERNST WIENHOEBER CO. 



22 EAST ELM STREET 



CHICAGO 



Our Unexcelled Facilities are Available to the 

 Trade in Filling all Orders 



MEMBER P. T. D. 



OAK PARK and the West Side of Chicago 



A. H. SCHNEIDER, 



MEMBER 

 F. T. D. 



1048 Lake St., Oak Park, 111. 



he would not think of improving his 

 methods, because he would not think 

 there was any need of improvement. 



Getting the Evidence. 



The federal income tax hit him. He 

 could not make proper returns, because 

 he did not have the records on which to 

 base them. This may have been true 

 even if he was doing a quite good-sized 

 business; the stock and the money 

 passed through his hands in large 

 amounts, but were not sufficiently re- 

 corded. 



But the government sent an investi- 

 gator. If there were no written records 

 to guide him, he took an inventory, 

 watched the operation of the business, 

 cross-examined the retailer as to its de- 

 tails and finally estimated the income 

 and profits. Probably the estimate 



seemed unfair, but the recordless re- 

 tailer had no way to disprove it. So 

 he resolved that next year he would 

 have his defense ready in the actual 

 total figures. 



To do this does not require a compli- 

 cated, or apparently complicated, sys- 

 tem of double-entry bookkeeping. As 

 a matter of fact, no system of book- 

 keeping is really complicated; its es- 

 sence and purpose is rather simplicity. 

 The trouble is that most people look at 

 it wrong-end-to. It is true that the 

 figures for the year start out with a 

 host of individual items from the in- 

 ventory and build up toward grand 

 totals. But the analysis of a system 

 works the other way around. It recog- 

 nizes first what totals are wanted and 

 why; then it works downward through 

 the details to pick out and classify the 



items needed for the purpose in view. 

 A Bit of Bookkeeping. 



In order to ^t the figures required 

 for the income tax returns, one needs 

 simply to make careful inventories at 

 the beginning and the end of the year 

 and to keep accurate records of sales, 

 expenses and purchases. The first in- 

 ventory plus purchases during the year 

 shows the amount of stock which the 

 store had for sale during that period, 

 in cost figures. This total minus the in- 

 ventory at the end of the year gives 

 the cost price of the stock which was 

 sold. Then the net profit, on which the 

 tax is figured, is calculated by adding 

 the expense total to the cost of stock 

 sold and subtracting that sum from the 

 gross sales. 



This may be somewhat simplified by 



