A Study of the Industrial and Accounting Organisation of the P & T Workshop Division of the Post and Telegraph Department at Wellington

Abstract

The study of Workshop Accounts was the primary object which enabled me to take up this project. The application of cost accounting and especially the job costing methods to the workshop accounting system is widely practised in New Zealand. So the main object of my practical training programme covering the period allocated to the workshop was to give me an insight into various practical problems of the cost accounting system. Cost Accounting is a subject which is learned more from practice than from books and the observation of the procedure in practice serves the purpose better than class room coaching. With this end in view, I was attached with the Post and Telegraph Department's workshop in Wellington. I started work with the workshop in the month of March, 1956 and remained with them till the middle of May, 1956. During this period most of my time was spent in the study of the procedure in the costing office of the workshop. I worked from one seat to another according to a prescribed programme. The emphasis was not so much on the routine work as on the assimilation of the procedure and the practical problems arising from its daily application from time to time.