New concepts in retail accounting;

              Robert Minnear, manager in the Atlanta office, is well
versed in the retail field. A graduate of Ohio State Uni­versity,
he joined the Dayton office of TRB&S in 1953
and transferred to Atlanta when that office was opened
in 1958.
Mr. Minnear is currently serving as secretary and mem­ber
of the Executive Committee of the Altanta Chapter of
the Georgia Society of CPAs and is a member of the
Board of Governors of the Atlanta Chapter of the Insti­tute
of Internal Auditors. He is married and has two
daughters.
NEW
IN
ETAIL ACCOUNTING is moving forward in new and
diverse directions to meet today's needs. The past few
years have witnessed impressive developments in com­puters
adaptable to the needs of retailers. New second and
third generation computer systems have come within the
reach of many more retail organizations. Point-of-sale
recorders, on-line-real-time systems and optical scanning
devices all loom large on the horizon. But not all of the
new developments in retail accounting are confined to
electronic data processing. Late in 1962 the Controllers'
Congress of the National Retail Merchants Association
published the Retail Accounting Manual. This book con­tains
new thinking in the areas of expense classification,
management reporting, departmental operating state­ments
and branch store accounting.
The purpose of this manual and its predecessors is the
development of a uniform accounting system applicable
to all retail enterprises. Since such a system must be adapt­able
to the management information requirements of indi­vidual
stores, the need for flexibility is paramount. On the
other hand, there must be sufficient discipline to insure
comparison of results among the various stores using it.
The system does not require of the stores uniform policies
or procedures. It is not an attempt to standardize the store.
The only standardization is in the measurement of the
results of store operations.
30 THE QUARTERLY