ABSTRACT

The first French accounting plan dates from 1942. Prepared under the German occupation, it was strongly influenced by the accounting plan adopted in Germany in 1937, itself derived from the work of Eugen Schmalenbach. Arranged in accordance with the pattern of circulation of goods within an enterprise, it integrated financial accounting and management accounting into one whole.

The 1947 Accounting Plan was very different, financial accounting and cost accounting being totally separated. This Plan is generally regarded as an original product of French standardizes. However, here again, it seems that the German example played a role. The accounting plan imposed by the Third Reich, in 1940, on small and medium enterprises was also “dualist”. Some of the principal originators of the 1947 Plan had already participated in the préparation of the 1942 Plan and had knowledge of this German plan, which might therefore have influenced them. Consequently, in the opinion of the author, the French input was marginal.

The usual explanation for the choice of “dualism” is the technical difficulties of integrating financial and cost accounting. But management’s taste for secrecy and the government’s care to make the Plan an instrument serving law and taxation are better explanations of the choice made in 1947. Unfortunately, this has had disastrous consequences for teaching, since productive activity is excluded from the field of vision offered by financial accounting. It is also one of the reasons for the weak development of cost accounting in firms.

Today, one can envisage a reform of the Accounting Plan, since information technology allows us to eliminate most of the technical difficulties, but reform would have the inconvenience of being costly and of coming up against ingrained habits. In order to counterbalance the negative pedagogic effects of the dualist plan, it would be necessary to introduce the teaching of accounting history into our courses and to begin by presenting to students a general accounting framework, with the French model regarded as no more than a special case.