tain Lohmeyer, who is the Chairman of the Educational Committee, was called to service, and Mr. Burnett, in addition to his other duties and his activities in other sections, volunteered to carry on this work. I certainly personally appreciate most heartily the great service Mr. Burnett has given to us during the past year. (Applause.)

CHAIRMAN INSULL: We will now have the report of the Committee on Accounting Service to Member Companies and the Monthly Bulletin, Mr. Frederick Smith, of the New York Edison Company, Chairman. In the absence of the Chairman, the report will be presented by Mr. Franklin L. Hall.

REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON ACCOUNTING SERVICE TO MEMBER COMPANIES

AND THE MONTHLY BULLETIN

OBJECT OF THE COMMITTEE

"To answer through the Chairman of the Committee and State Accounting Representatives of the Committee, inquiries from Member Companies on accounting questions, conducting thereby the previous functions of the Question Box Committee for all Companies, and otherwise to be of accounting service to such companies; to report and edit items of accounting news in the monthly Bulletin of the Association; to secure original articles and discussions on accounting questions."

Your Committee is gratified to report that very satisfactory progress was made during the past year in the rendering of valuable assistance to many of the member companies.

CHANGE IN THE NAME OF THE COMMITTEE

The Committee was originally created for the purpose of getting the small central station Class "A" Member Companies interested in the Association's activities; however, due to the unsettled conditions prevailing during the period of the war and the resulting inactivity of most of the committees of the Accounting Section, your Committee served as an emergency committee, rendering service to Member Companies irrespective of their size. As a result of this development, the name of the Committee was necessarily changed by the Executive Committee of the Accounting Section from the "Committee on Accounting Service to Small Companies and the Monthly Bulletin" to "Committee on Accounting Service to Member Companies and the Monthly Bulletin," thereby increasing considerably the scope and usefulness of its work.

ACTIVITIES

A large number of Member Companies took advantage of the medium offered through which to solve their accounting probManuscript of this report was received April twenty-eighth.

lems-some of these problems arising as a result of the unusual times, and others being questions in connection with the daily office routine.

Inquiries on almost every phase of accounting have been handled. The list quoted below gives a good idea of the variety and wide divergence of the subjects which have been under discussion:

1-Accounting for the installation, removal and replacement and operation of a storage battery.

2-Accounting for service extensions paid for by customer. 3-Percentage of the total operating expenses considered a reasonable amount to maintain the property of a company in an efficient manner.

4 Depreciation rates for different classes of equipment of hydro-electric plants.

5-Methods used by Member Companies in determining the

amount of credit to capital account to cover removal of overhead lines where the original cost is not available. 6 Method of ascertaining units of original installation from storeroom credits.

7-Methods employed in keeping consumers' accounts-meter reading, billing, ledger work, collection work.

8 Forms and data used in accounting for plant investment, additions and dismantling of property.

9-Disposition in the accounts of charges for the cost of dismantling plants.

10-Distinction between commercial and general expenses.

11-Procedure followed in connection with the signing of checks. 12-Accounting for unsold bonds, pledged as collateral for notes payable.

13-Accounting for shortages and overages of collectors and other employees handling cash funds.

14 Capitalization of increased maintenance costs due to war conditions.

15-Definitions covering kilowatt-hour output of a generating

station.

16-Propriety of including an amount for obsolescence in setting up the Reserve for Depreciation of Property.

It will be noted that some of the foregoing subjects relate to the work usually handled by other committees of the Accounting Section, which committees suspended their activities doing the period of the war. Now that the conditions are again returning to normal, it will be practical to follow the original plan of the Section of referring inquiries relating to a particular subject to the committee covering that phase of accounting. The Committee on Accounting Service to Member Companies and the Monthly Bulletin should therefore confine its work to those inquiries. dealing with subjects not specifically covered by any of the other committees.

PROCEDURE FOLLOWED UPON THE RECEIPT OF AN ACCOUNTING QUESTION

The question is numbered serially and forwarded to the State Representatives and to a number of other accounting officials, with the request that it receive their earnest attention. When their replies are received, copies are immediately forwarded to the company or individual raising the inquiry. When all the data have been collected, a complete list of the answers is compiled, headed by the question in the form under which it was submitted. A copy of the answers is sent to each State Representative and the other accounting officials for their information. These answers, treating exhaustively of the subject under discussion, form a most instructive and interesting collection and are placed on file at Headquarters for the use of Member Companies seeking like information.

In addition to this, many of the problems and the answers thereto have been published in the Accounting Section of the Bulletin. Through this medium a wide field is covered with most satisfactory results.

The following are extracts from letters of Member Companies expressing appreciation of service rendered:

Acc.

"We sincerely appreciate the efforts you have made in our behalf and hope that you will call on us if we can ever be of any assistance to you."

"I wish to thank you for your letter enclosing answers to question submitted to you. The information is very interesting and will be very helpful to us in our situation."

"Your letters enclosing answers to my question have been received. These answers are very interesting and will be of great assistance to us. We appreciate the wide circulation you have given to this question."

"I have been able to get some very satisfactory information from the replies which you have forwarded me, and I thoroughly appreciate the courtesy which you have shown."

"We are much indebted to you for the replies which were sent us in answer to our question. There are several good ideas among them and we hope to benefit thereby." "The information we have received is so complete and enlightening that we now feel we will be able to decide upon definitions which will be entirely satisfactory to us in the complicated situation existing in our State."

RECOMMENDATIONS

Under this heading your Committee desires to bring to the attention of the Accounting Section a letter recently received from the Iowa Section of the National Electric Light Association as follows:

Mr. T. C. Martin, Secretary,

National Electric Light Association,

29 West 39th Street,

New York City.

My dear Mr. Martin:

There is a demand upon the part of the members of the Association, operating independent plants in small towns, for information with reference to the application of the N.E.L.A. system of accounting to their properties.

In Iowa there are a number of small independent companies which do not at the present time have a standard system of accounting, much to their detriment and to the detriment of the industry as a whole, when any comparisons are attempted or information requested on their operating results. The Association feels that an attempt should be made, first, to convince the small operators of the necessity of adopting some standard system, and second, to show them how to get started on this.