Scrooge Manning the Books --Dickeson

Trying to use general ledger financial statements for management is, as one writer puts it, trying to steer the car by watching the yellow line in the rear-view mirror. GLA facts are artifacts available only weeks after the close of some period.

We've agonized for years with the clumsiness of those months based on moon phases, developed by Pope Gregory and Julius Caesar. Some of us now use three months of 4-4-5 seven-day weeks to make sense of a quarter. We're still confused by ancient asset values being depreciated into "reserves" that have no value and all of the adjustments Cratchitt and the accounting rabbis must make.