Plastic bag taxes – and the costs saved
It’s 13 years since Ireland introduced a plastic bag levy of 15c, then 22c. Since then, around €200m has been collected from consumers. England recently introduced a similar scheme and this prompted me to reflect on what the less use of plastic bags has meant for Ireland – with a cost/accounting angle of course.
The first thing that strikes me is the lack of plastic bags stuck in hedges. Not only does this mean a cleaner countryside, but much lower clean up costs for local councils.Second, I would say the packaging industry did not lose out, as paper bags are generally available in stores – cost neutral in terms of employment. This is good too as paper is renewable, but also lost people have a car boot full of reusable bags. I still have some dating back to 2002 believe it or not. Third, as a tax it worked in that it changed our behaviour as a nation – for the good of the exchequer and the environment.
Another cost overrun example
Following from my last post, here is another example of costs and design problems -but this one is a real project. A bridge crossing the Bay Area in San Franciso had an original cost estimate of $250, but the final cost was in excess of $6 billion. This occurred for many reasons, bad cost estimates, politics and the length of time involved. Read the article at the link for full detail – it’s a great example of the cost problems associated with infrastructure projects.
Why accountants and designers should work together.
Marketing and design people tend to be very creative, and fair play to them, it’s part of what they are. But design is one thing and actually building or making sometime is tougher – if you have ever built even a standard house you will know what I mean.
The one thing I have learned about design of products is to not change the design after you agree it – this typically causes costs to go upwards. If a customer is willing to pay for this great, but that’s usually the exception.
My experience of product design is it is best to involve someone with good management accounting knowledge from the outset. This person need not be an accountant, but must has good knowledge of costs and or processes to build or make the final product. Otherwise big surprises can occur.
Maybe it’s an extreme example but take the main stadium design for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. According to reports, the cost of the design to be built has doubled to $2 billion since inception. Surely if someone with half decent knowledge of costs working with the designer would have spotted the additional costs.
Saving €13.3m annually on water….
Image from woodiesdiy.com
You may or may not know that Ireland has only recently started to charge for domestic water use. There has been some heated debate, but here are some simple numbers based my own household.
With two simple water butts – small 100l capacity costing about €60 In total (see the photo above) – I have saved at least 6,000 litres of water in the past year. At the metered rates this is not a lot saved financially, about €22. But if half of Irish households did this (about 600,000 houses) that is a total of €13.32 million per annum across the country. Not to mention how I have seen my kids get instilled with the idea of conserving water.
Of course that’s only half the story. Saving water from rainfall means less produced water, less stress on infrastructure, less energy consumed and so on. I have no idea what these effects would do to my savings figure above – certainly a multiplier.
Typical accountant you may be thinking, but that’s it, we need to think not only about costs we pay for water, but other costs too.
Accounting and big data
In my view, even though some accountants may not agree, big data will effect how accounting is done. This is particularly true for management accounting.
I was going to write an outline of my thoughts on big data and management accounting, but I found this great post on diginomica. It gives some really good practical insights. It notes how the following, for example, gets accountants interested in big data- it is being used to:
- Improve the quality of budgets, plans and forecasts
- Enhance top line revenue
- Reduce operational costs
- Detect fraud
- Assess the viability of a company as an on-going concern
A simple definition of management accounting
When some one asks me for a simple definition of management accounting, I typically say “the provision of decision-making information to managers”. This in my view covers all aspects of what a management accountant typically does, be it the provision of financial or non-financial information, short or long term view etc. Of course, some management accountants are also decision-makers, for example when they occupy a CFO role in a large company for example.
I don’t know if I should be surprised or not, but I read an old article from the Irish Times of 22 January, 1971 (by C Power) – a few years (but not many) before my time. The article was giving career advice to budding accountants of that time. I quote:
” A more specialist sector, however, is the cost accountancy field. This is a key area – indeed cost accountants are often referred to as management accountants because of their function of providing accounting information to aid management decisions”
The bit is bold is above is not that dissimilar from my simple definition I guess, with the exception being the maybe narrower word “accounting” as part of the definition. I do like simple definitions, as they often do stand the test of time.
Management accountants and technology change
Changes in technology is regularly a top issue for management accountants when asked. Of course in recent years, the pace of technology change has been so rapid compared to previous. How can management accountants deal with such change? An article from the CGMA provides some useful tips.
The versatility of gross profit margin
You may know the gross profit margin ratio, which is:
Gross Profit x 100
Sales.
Gross profit is: Sales – Cost of Sales
and
Cost of Sales = Opening inventory + Purchases/cost of production – Closing Inventory.
In this short post I would just like to share some of my experiences on the versatility of this simple ratio. If we look at the elements of the ratio, it is easy to see that if each element remain stable, the answer should also be stable. So for example, if I buy something for €40, sell it for €100, then my GP margin is 60%. If my sales price or purchase price changes, then the GP margin changes. Then, if we think about inventory levels, if these fluctuate the GP margin changes too. Taking all this together, it’s easy enough to see how any business typically knows what its GP margin should be. Thus, if it varies considerably, there may be something wrong.
Here are two things I know the GP margin is used for. One, from my own experience, is in pubs/bars. Most pubs/bars are susceptible to fraud and controls typically put in place by owners. One such control is monthly stock-takes and monthly accounts. A fall in the GP margin could indicate “lost” stock or unrecorded cash receipts – which further controls may reveal. Another use is to spot inflated revenues. Businesses may want to make their profits look better and thus do things like invoice for goods early, before the end of a financial year. These good may not even be bought/made yet. Thus, the GP margin may be lower. Again further investigation is needed to find the issue.
There may of course be more simple reasons for changes in the GP margin – costs and sales prices may simply change and affect the ratio. But once these have been ruled out, it is a useful indicator.
Cost of mistakes
Sorry for another airline related post!
I was on a flight recently from Dublin and as the above photo shows, there was a little incident on the taxi to takeoff. Two aircraft touched each other. The one I was on (above) incurred wing damage, the other one tail damage. I’m not going to try to guess who made a mistake, but someone did. So what did this mistake cost?
Let’s think of costs in a broad sense. Here is my thinking
- Repair costs of both aircraft
- Lost revenue as aircraft are out of service
- Cost of renting replacement aircraft and crew
- Cost of emergency services attending the incident
- Customer service costs e.g. passenger refunds
- Cost of buses to return passengers to the terminal
- Increased compliance costs to ensure such mistakes do not happen again.
And there may be more. I’m just using this incident as an illustration of how we need to think of costs in a broad sense.
The cost you add to a flight – yes, you.
The April 2015 edition of National Geographic includes a very nice short article which draws on the work of two MIT aeronautical engineers. The article to me is a very nice mix of explaining why airlines charge more for more weight (of bags usually, but some airlines are considering weight of passengers too), and how we as passengers can reduce CO2 emissions as we fly.
For many years now, low-cost carriers in particular have charged more for checked in bags. They also step-up the charges as bags get heavier. The key reason for this is to reduce ground-handling time – less checked bags, less baggage handling, faster turnaround, all of which reduce cost or increase revenue. But, as the National Geographic article also points out, more weight equals more fuel consumption and higher fuel cost. The MIT engineers used a Boeing 737-800 (as used by Ryanair) at 75% capacity as a model to calculate how much extra fuel cost various passenger items incur over a year. A 25kg suitcase increases costs by $3,267 per annum, a 1okg carry on $980, a laptop $291 and a full-bladder $29 – among other examples. Ryanair currently have 303 aircraft (per their website), so taking just the costs I quote, this is $4,567 per passenger per year x 190 seats x 303 aircraft, this equate to $262,922,190 – and that’s a big potential cost saving. I can already see Ryanair’s next advert 🙂
There are two points to take from the above. It is obvious that airlines may charge more for weighty items as these drive fuel costs up. The second point is look how much cost we could save the environment by taking even small steps like taking a pee before boarding – $29 x 190 seats x 303 = $1,669,530 worth of fuel. This is just one airline, and I have no idea how much CO2 emissions are reduced by, but as Tesco say “every little counts”.
The Pope’s view on accountants
Image from wikipedia
A recent quote from Pope Francis to the World Congress of Accountants captures the broader role of accounting quite well:
” everyone, especially those who practise a profession which deals with the proper functioning of a country’s economic life, is asked to play a positive, constructive role in performing their daily work, knowing that behind every file, there is a story, there are faces.”
This quote reminds us that behind the numbers are real jobs, real people and real effects. It may be easy to forget this as you trawl over a ledger audit trail or provide information to managers, but reminding ourselves of the broad reach of our accounting numbers can only be a good thing.
The full text the address by Pope Francis can be found here.
Why does craft beer cost so much?
Image from brubrewery.ie
I’ve often wondered why craft beer costs more than our normal mass-produced and popular brands. Is it because it tastes better – like the Bru brand to the left, it’s really nice. Or because it cost more to produce? Or the smaller breweries have less economies of scale? Or does tax have something to do with it. It may be a combination of all of these, or some other factors I have not mentioned. However, a quick search of the internet revealed the answer to me – it is about cost of production, but not the raw materials. It is also about volume, but not volume sales.
An article I found on the Huffington Post is a good example of the cost issue faced by craft brewers. If you look at the article, you will see that largest cost item is packaging – the bottle and label you may think. A bit of further digging around the internet revealed that the greatest part of the packaging cost is shipping. But not shipping to end customers, shipping to be bottled. It seems a bottling machine is quite expensive, and at small volumes is not easy for a craft brewery to purchase. Instead, they often send the beer away in vats to be returned in bottles. The Huffington Post article suggests that 50% of the cost to the customer is margin. I am not sure if this is the case in Europe, but certainly small craft breweries are unlikely to be able to invest in a large bottling plant at the outset. As volume increase, they may be able to do so. Let them stay small I say, the variety of beers is better then.
The costs of sitting in traffic?
We all know what it is like to sit in traffic, but ever wondering how much money is wasted through lost time? An article from The Economist gives a good picture. Some research conducted by the Centre for Economics and Business Research and INRIX looked at costs of traffic jams in three ways – 1) reduced productivity, 2) higher transport costs and 3) carbon costs of fumes. Their cost estimates across four countries comes to some $200 billion. Quite a sum I think you will agree. I wonder how much of this cost relates to lost labour time – or in other words what is the opportunity cost to firms of having staff delayed in traffic. Of course, you could think of this from the view of the worker too – the opportunity cost might be at least some extra time in bed instead of the morning rush hour.
Trains in the west of Ireland – price and volumes.
I read an article in a leading Irish newspaper recently which has a typical cost volume profit theme underlying it.
The article related to the “Western Rail Corridor”, a route from Sligo to Limerick which had been closed down many years ago. In recent years with the help of local campaigns and some political backing, some of the line re-opened. According to the article:
“A report by consultants drawn up before the service began concluded that, even with healthy passenger numbers, it would not be able to wash its face and would need hefty subventions. And the passenger projections in that report were substantially higher than those that actually travelled in the first few years”
It seems the passenger volumes have been quite low in recent years too. But then Irish Rail did something – they lowered fares and made tickets available online. With online fares as low as €6, the passenger number have increase from 23,000 to 41,000 in the year to November 2014. I do not know what the operating costs are, or whether these passenger numbers are sufficient in the long term, but it is a classic example of the relationship between price, cost and volumes. Assume the costs are the same at 23,000 or 41,000 passenger levels, the rail company is likely to be better off – maybe not making a profit on the route, but at least covering more of its costs.
Management accounting during WW1
Image from wikipedia
As you know I’m sure, 2014 was 100 years since the outbreak of the Great War, or World War 1 as we know it today. Myself and a colleague were lucky enough to do some research on how management accounting was affected by the war. I will summarise our work here, but you can find the full paper here.
We studied how the war affected management accounting at Guinness – yes the world-famous stout. I had already carried out some research at Guinness, so I was aware that even before 1914 they had a relative complex management accounting system. They were quite good at allocating costs to various cost centres.
As the war broke out, the accountants and managers initially viewed it as a short-term event. It became apparent soon enough that would not be the case. Thus, Guinness started to view additional costs (such as extra insurance costs) as normal costs and allocated them to various cost centres. For example, if Guinness shipped to Liverpool or London, the freight costs were normally charged to the receiving depots owned by the company. With the war in full swing, the additional insurance costs for these trips was also allocated to the depots.
The company made other changes too, but the above example is a good case of existing practice being modified to deal with new business issues- something which management accountants still do a lot of today.
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