Commercial Accounting

a method of economic management in which cost (monetary) comparisons are made between expenditures for and results of economic activity. The method is used by capitalist enterprises (firms and companies) to obtain maximum profit with minimum capital expenditures.

In present capitalist economic practice the term “input-output” is widespread and reflects the demand that the amount of capital invested in production be commensurate with the results of the economic activity. Rationalizing the use of capital, reducing production costs, improving the processes of establishing labor rates and keeping labor-expenditure records, and refining the organization of labor and production are ways of intensifying capitalist production and lead to the aggravation of the socioeconomic contradictions of the capitalist economy and to a growth in unemployment. Under capitalism, commerical accounting is required by the all-encompassing nature of commodity production and by the spontaneous action of the law of value in the bitter competitive struggle in domestic and foreign markets.

Commercial accounting existed during the first years of Soviet power, when some enterprises were operating on commercial principles. As the socialist economy grew stronger and the sphere of socialist production relations expanded, commercial accounting (kommercheskii raschet) was replaced by cost accounting (khoziaistvennyi raschet).