Quincy

"How's business?" The usual response is, "Great! We've got a terrific estimating system." We have a tendency to equate job costs with the costs we "estimate." Often overlooked, perhaps, is the major value of a job costing system. System suppliers know and exploit this pricing weakness. Dr. Quincy, the '70s TV pathologist, doesn't try to predict when a person will die. He reacts to what has already occurred. We can do a Quincy act with our cost accounting system. For a cost accounting system we have two data sets: A. Transaction job dollar costs (Transactors) 1) Paper and ink 2) Buyouts 3) Hourly work center "standard" rates B.

Recall Dr. Quincy, the television series pathologist? He conducted postmortem examinations of bodies of crime victims. I caught a rerun the other day of that old Jack Klugman series, and it triggered some thoughts about costing and printing—if you can imagine that! When I talk about "job costing" with a printer, the usual response is, "Yeah, we've got a terrific estimating system." We have a tendency to equate job costs with cost estimating and often overlook perhaps the major value of a job costing system. We should play Quincy with our cost accounting system. Dr. Quincy didn't try to predict when a given person would die