Accounting Systems Can Drive Bad Decisions

It amazes me how companies will setup an accounting system this is designed to drive bad decisions.

Recently, I have been working with a client on improving an internal process to the team.  During the direct observation with the order writer something very interesting surfaced.

The order writer can write orders to be processed one of two ways.  The order writer said that method A costs $400 and only takes 1.5 hours to write the order.  While method B costs $30 and takes 2 days to write the order.

I asked where the costs came from because the orders are processed by another internal group.  The order writer said it is the cost of systems and labor time for that group and they charge back the order writing team the cost of each order.

The internal order processing group is managed as a Profit and Loss center.  They are treated like a company.

Sadly, I have seen this accounting set up quite a bit.  Even the support groups like IT, HR, etc… are setup as P&L centers.

This drives decisions to be made that are not in the best interest of the company.

In this case, the order writer is considered value added because they are changing the order to get product to customers.  They help generate revenue.  Half of order processing is non-value added (entering all the information they get from the order writers) while half is value added (executing the order).

Because the business gets charged back over 10 times more the cost per order for the more automated order, the value added order writers are asked to take 2 days write an order which then adds actual hard dollar cost because it takes more order writers to get the orders written and submitted.

What is wrong with being a support center, knowing it and accounting for it?  Why does everything have to be a P&L center to “prove” it’s value?

The places who treat support areas like support areas and don’t worry about P&L centers for everything don’t typically make decisions like the one above.  They understand how a supporting area adds value and don’t feel the need to quantify it in a P&L statement.

Have  you encountered this in your work?