John Manger Fells

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John Manger Fells (1858 - 7 December 1925) was a British incorporated accountant [1] consultant, and author on accounting. He was known as promoter of cost accounting and leading cost accountant in Britain early 20th century. [2] [3] [4]

Accountant practitioner of accountancy or accounting

An accountant is a practitioner of accounting or accountancy, which is the measurement, disclosure or provision of assurance about financial information that helps managers, investors, tax authorities and others make decisions about allocating resource(s).

Accounting measurement, processing and communication of financial information about economic entities

Accounting or accountancy is the measurement, processing, and communication of financial information about economic entities such as businesses and corporations. The modern field was established by the Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli in 1494. Accounting, which has been called the "language of business", measures the results of an organization's economic activities and conveys this information to a variety of users, including investors, creditors, management, and regulators. Practitioners of accounting are known as accountants. The terms "accounting" and "financial reporting" are often used as synonyms.

Cost accounting financial term

Cost accounting is the process of recording, classifying, analyzing, summarizing, and allocating costs associated with a process, and then developing various courses of action to control the costs. Its goal is to advise the management on how to optimize business practices and processes based on cost efficiency and capability. Cost accounting provides the detailed cost information that management needs to control current operations and plan for the future.

Contents

Biography

Fells was a tailor's son, [5] who came into prominence as secretary of Zetetical Society early 1880s, where he crossed paths with Sidney Webb and Emile Garcke. [6]

Sidney Webb, 1st Baron Passfield British Baron and politician

Sidney James Webb, 1st Baron Passfield, was a British socialist, economist, reformer and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. He was one of the early members of the Fabian Society in 1884, along with George Bernard Shaw. Along with his wife Beatrice Webb, Annie Besant, Graham Wallas, Edward R. Pease, Hubert Bland, and Sydney Olivier, Shaw and Webb turned the Fabian Society into the pre-eminent political-intellectual society of England during the Edwardian era and beyond. He wrote the original Clause IV for the British Labour Party.

Emile Garcke English industrialist

Emile Oscar Garcke was a naturalised British electrical engineer, industrial, commercial and political entrepreneur managing director of the British Electric Traction Company (BET), and early author on accounting. who is noted for writing the earliest standard text on cost accounting in 1887.

In 1887 Fells had become assistant secretary at the Brush Electrical Light Corporation, [7] which was directed by Emile Garcke in those days. With Garcke he co-authored with the book "Factory Accounts: Their Principles and Practice." In the next decades this books was published in seven editions, and was still in use in Britain as educational text in the early 1930s. [8] Fells joined the SAA accounting association in 1902, and was later elected fellow of the ICWA. He became known as authority in the field of cost accounting.

Chartered Institute of Management Accountants

TheChartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) is a UK based professional body offering training and qualification in management accountancy and related subjects. It is focused on accountants working in industry, and provides ongoing support and training for members.

Early in the 1900s Fells became chairman of the mining corporation Kent Collieries, [9] by 1911 he was director of three mining corporations with operations in Burma and Australia. [10] and later worked as consultant for the British industry and lectured accountants in India and Japan. [11]

In World War I Fells served as Private Secretary to the Surveyor-General of Supply in the War Office, and was appointed a CBE, Civilian War Honour, in 1920.

World War I 1914–1918 global war originating in Europe

World War I, also known as the First World War or the Great War, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. Contemporaneously described as "the war to end all wars", it led to the mobilisation of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history. It is also one of the deadliest conflicts in history, with an estimated nine million combatants and seven million civilian deaths as a direct result of the war, while resulting genocides and the 1918 influenza pandemic caused another 50 to 100 million deaths worldwide.

War Office department of the British Government responsible for the administration of the British Army

The War Office was a Department of the British Government responsible for the administration of the British Army between 1857 and 1964, when its functions were transferred to the Ministry of Defence. It was equivalent to the Admiralty, responsible for the Royal Navy, and the Air Ministry, which oversaw the Royal Air Force. The name "War Office" is also given to the former home of the department, the War Office building, located at the junction of Horse Guards Avenue and Whitehall in central London.

Work

Financial accounting and cost accounting

As authority in the field of cost accounting, Fells was engaged in promoting the profession and the legal status of the profession. In those days there was a big difference between financial accounting and cost accounting. Locke (1979) recalled:

Financial accounting field of accounting

Financial accounting is the field of accounting concerned with the summary, analysis and reporting of financial transactions related to a business. This involves the preparation of financial statements available for public use. Stockholders, suppliers, banks, employees, government agencies, business owners, and other stakeholders are examples of people interested in receiving such information for decision making purposes.

[Financial accounting was] a liberal profession made up of independent wealthy businessmen who did not work directly for industry but acted as consultants, working out of their own offices, much as lawyers do. The chartered or incorporated accountants, moreover, were not even exposed to cost accounting during their training, for as young “articled” clerks they were apprenticed to accounting offices instead of formally educated in colleges or universities. They could only learn what happened in the offices and, since the accountants seldom dealt with costing matters neither did the apprentices. The clerks who kept cost records in British industry were not chartered or incorporated accountants. They were poor, badly educated men who received what training they got on the job in a factory bookkeeping office. They hardly ever came into professional contact with public accountants who, in any case, despised them because of their lower class origins. [2]

In 1910 J.M. Fells remarked that public accountants still "did not consider these industrial cost accountants to be engaged in accounting." [2]

Selected publications

Articles, a selection:

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This page is an index of accounting topics.

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References

  1. ↑ Michael Chatfield, Richard Vangermeersch. History of Accounting: An International Encyclopedia. 1996/2014, p. 269.
  2. 1 2 3 Locke, Robert R. "Cost Accounting: An Institutional Yardstick For Measuring British Entrepreneurial Performance Circa 1914," in: The Accounting Historians Journal (1979): 1-22. (online):
  3. ↑ Kitchen, Jack, and Robert Henry Parker. Accounting thought and education: Six English pioneers. Taylor & Francis, 1980.
  4. ↑ Mattessich, Richard. "Accounting Theories of the First Half of the Twentieth Century." Accounting and Business Economics: Insights from National Traditions 13 (2012). p. 17.
  5. ↑ Derek Matthews, Malcolm Anderson, J. R. Edwards (1998). The Priesthood of Industry: The Rise of the Professional Accountant in British Management. p. 86
  6. ↑ Norman Mackenzie ed. The Letters of Sidney and Beatrice Webb: Volume 1, Apprenticeships 1873-1892. Cambridge University Press, 14 okt. 2008. p. 75-78
  7. ↑ Matthews et al. (1998, p. 118)
  8. ↑ Solomons, David. "Costing Pioneers: Some Links with the Past." The Accounting Historians Journal, Vol. 21, No. 2 , December 1994
  9. ↑ Matthews et al. (1998, p. 131)
  10. ↑ Matthews et al. (1998, p. 128)
  11. ↑ J.M. Fells. "Cost Accounting," in: Incorporated Accountants' Students' Society of London. 1910. p. 160-161
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