TELEGRAMS.

Hokitika Guardian, 19 April 1922, Page 3

TELEGRAMS.

RAILWAY ACCOUNTS MECHANICS IN BOOKKEEPING. NEW ZEALAND’S REMARKABLE SYSTEM. WELLINGTON, April 9. When the newspaper reader finds from his daily paper that the Railway Department’s revenue for eleven f months has amounted—a« shown by! this week’s ■ returns— to £6,11)8,413 9s ' 6d, lie probably gives no thought to , the methods by which every item, great and small, in the trading of the railways has been brought to account in ' this total of millions. To merely count 1 up the accumulated transactions until they run into millions is an important arithmetical task, but much more is involved in a concern which has to secure through checks on the whole of the sums received from the public T;.i. is the work of the Railway Audit Department. and since last August it lias brought to its aid a wonderful set of machines which have reduced the “spade work” of book-keeping to a]- ; most a simple performance of a me- i elianical task. Instead of skilled accountants, the bulk of the “ spade, work ” in its accountancy system is ,

done by girls who probaby know Hulking about the intricacies of accountancy, though they are accurate typistes. 'flic New Zealand Railways Depart, ment is the first railway concern south of the Line to instal for its account, ancy work the Powers sorting and tabu lating machines. They have been tried by it long enough to make it clear that not only do the machines simplify the work, hut through their agency a mass of important information regarding the nature of traffic and the money returns can be secured mechanically, and with absolute jtecuracy, for a!| calculations are done by a machine. AUDIT BY MACHINERY.

When a customer of the ’Department consigns goods to a station, he in effect buys a certain amount of transport service from the Department. He may pay for it immediately, or lie may require the receiver to pay, in which case the transaction is called “To pay.”

An Auckland merchant may buy, say £6 worth of transport to Wellington on the "To pay” basis. " Auckland records this tram action, and it becomes necessary to ascertain eventually I whether the Wellington staff has duly 1 ctße,-led that £6. If it was one transaction flic matter could be quickly cleared up, but on the New Zealand railways there are about four thousand of these purchases of transport every day, and the stations involved number many hundreds. Auckland. for instance, would put through four hundred separate goods transactions daily to possibly 200 different stations. It. Id’s an inward business Cqiiul!\ as large, so th :i l possibly 200 station., have sold franspoi t- to Auckland. Their accounts show charges which Auckland must collect and it is a matter for the accountants to see that these debits me eventually turned into credits in the bank. To cheek the whole ] recess involves making out a statement showing the accumulated transsetious of each station, bn sod, not only on its own returns hut—for purposes of a check—on the returns in respect to its business si ov. n in the hooks of all other stations doiiifj; business with it. Th s is the work of "abstracting,” a tedious business normally, involving the preparation of schedules of all the transactions classified under the headings of stations. For large centres, two clerks were continually employed in abstracting, while at the smaller stations the task involved the burning of much midnight oil by the statioiimaster or his clerks. Now machinery has come into this work, and it is all concentrated in Wellington, where a small staff, principally ol girls, dot's the whole of the “ nbstrnetmg ” !<>r the system, and easily keeps up with the work in daylight hours. Not only is there the labour-saving, hut there is the mechanical cheek on addition of money-and weights, and several other important things mi concerned in the process of ensuring that all transport sold by the railways is duly,accounted for and hanked to the Department's credit.

The consignment of each lot of good' involves the preparation of a waybill, which by means oi’ carbon paper is made out in triniicate in ihe one operation. One copy goes with tin* goods, another is sent direct to the receiving 'station, and the third i!o permanent record of the transaction which goewitli ;il 1 other .similar waybills to Wei-j lington. Facli day’s collection of waybills from a station is .summarised in a return, and forwarded to Wellington with the set of wuvbdls a’tach-al. A girl :it the Powers machine then copies the items from tlit* waybills, but tiic result is shown, not in. typewriting, hut in holes punched on mi oblong card carrying columns of figures relating to weights, money, tli" nature of i. o pavilion, and the sending and receiving stations, each of which have their distinctive number. The set of punched■cards is put through the Powers tabulating machine, which at a rapid pace prints off the whole ol ihe items, and gives a total which serves as a check oil the human calculation oi the balance. As those waybills ielate to a large number of stations, they have to he sorted in station order, so ihui the transactions of all stations are brought ! oge ! . or. This is done quite automat drily by a soiling machine which, working on the punched cards, shows an uncanny capacity for turning all the No. 24 station transactions into the box of that number. The tabulating machine takes the bifldi of No. 20 cards, ami in a few moments has a correctly totalled record of the whole. !l is tin u a matter for comparison between abstracts from different. stations, to cheek o(l' the transactions of any one by tli-' •abstract furnished by sill other station: which have done business with it. Any ii regularities are followed bv the ■ input familiar to railway: .en as a “please explain.” KSSSSSI®' ' ANALYSING THF. BUSINESS. Railway operating is so large a busii ness that to keep count of its many 1 phases involves an enormous annum l of clerical labour. New Zealand’s railway transactions for the year are only shown under seven heads, six classes ol I goods and the passenger traffis. Under the manual system of accounts this was

| about the limit of analysis possible at 1 reasonable expense, but the particulars punched on the waybill cards by the girls enable these cards when sorted through the sorting machine in “commodity order” to produce quite automatically the totals in weight and money involved in the carrying of various classes of traffic. The old statistical system gave no clue to the general public, or to Parliament, regarding the extent of eoncession involved in carrying lime free ! for farmers, or of any other special ! facility provided under the policy of ! running the railways, not so much for i a visible cash profit, ns for the development of the Dominion. However, the installation of these wonderful mechanical aids to accountancy will i o.ne eiia' la tiie Department to take oui nalLmil figures ielating to 46 classes rf fra Hie instead oi only seven. Instead of hulking all cereals under one heading, the future statistics will show the relative value of the wheat traffic compared with oats. Instead of merely “coal” we will lie able to know win’.; quantities of the various classes, imported or otherwise, have been handled, and the cash results. And the lime and manure traffic will have its details made public for everyone to see. Eventually the system will enable statistics lo be furnished of the average iongtii of journey, and average freight. This is easily within the compass of these machines, and involves no more trouble, for it is all done in the first punching out of pariiciilars from the waybills.

The value of this finer analysis ol railway business will be tremendous, for it places the railway administrators in as good a position to know the nature of all phases of the trading as any small business men who can carry the details of his transactions in a pocket-book. The New Zealand Railway Department is freely criticised for its service, but in its accountancy system it is now able to give points to the best business concerns.