30 BULLETIN" 660, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
DAILY REPORT OF COSTS. 
When the records of the amount of labor, the service of equipment, 
and the expenditures of materials have been completed the data for 
arriving at unit costs are at hand. For convenience in bringing 
together these three elements of cost, a form has been drawn up 
called the " Daily report of costs." This is not for field use and is 
8^ inches wide and 13| inches long. The unit costs are arrived at 
by setting down against the code number all labor equipment and 
material charges in detail. These are added together and the sum is 
divided by the units of work completed as estimated by the foreman. 
The units completed are checked against the engineer's monthly esti- 
mate and should not show a very great discrepancy, say not over 5 
per cent at the outside. 
Sample labor and equipment and materials forms for work of con- 
structing a field stone base course of a road and the daily report of 
costs form filled out from these are shown on pages 33, 34 and 35. 
These three forms compose the entire set needed to record the field 
operations and compute unit costs of such operations. 
IMMEDIATE USE OF COST DATA. 
When the daily reports of costs reach the official responsible for 
the work he can readily prepare a graph (fig. 6) showing both the 
estimated unit cost and the actual daily unit cost in convenient form. 
Any wide divergence between the estimated and actual costs is 
apparent at once and can be investigated. The horizontal axis of 
the graph in this case is divided to show the days of the month. 
The vertical axis is divided to show the unit cost of the work. Some 
such chart will show effect of conditions "upon the work. 
FINAL DISPOSITION OF COST DATA. 
It has been pointed out that the objects of a cost-keeping system 
are two. First, to show the efficiency of performance and facilitate 
the reduction of costs, and, second, to supply data which may be 
used for the intelligent estimating of future improvements and to 
furnish materials for published reports. 
Highway work obviously is a public improvement paid for entirely 
from funds derived from the public revenue. Ultimately, then, the 
taxpayer pays for all of this improvement and is entitled to a full 
and detailed account of how this money was expended. Again, 
public records of this kind are all that remain to be used for the 
comparing of the efficiency of one administration with that of another. 
It would appear, therefore, to be a step in the direction of good 
judgment for all those in charge of public improvements to adopt 
