Kostebeheersing, kostebesef en die doeltreffendheid van die onderneming

Abstract

The central purpose of a private business is to earn a profit and to reach this goal, the entrepreneur must be able to sell his product at the prices as determined by the market or by price control. In our dinamic age no enterprise, no matter how efficient its organisation, can be considered as absolutely safeguarded. Com.petition from the same or similar products is ever present or possible, and a can petitor may be successful, not necessarily on account of a new or better product, but because he can produce it cheaper. As a means of attrackting additional custom, t he appeal to the price motive has been throughout the ages the trader's most logical and indeed most potent tactical weapon. Because it is inevitable that an enterprise will have to live with competition and price control, it is obvious that the cost price of its product will be a factor of extreme importance. The enterprise naturally aims at the maximum profit that can be derived from. the sale of its products, but this aim can be crippled if relatively high losses are sustained through lack of proper control. Cost control aims to discover these losses, to analyse and to eliminate them. The purpose of this study will then be to analyse the function of cost control in order to determine its use as a means to enable the enterprise to eliminate unnecessary losses and to increase profits accordingly. In chapter 1 some concepts which are used in this script, are defined. The definitions are necessitated because the Anglo-Saxon influence, which is based upon the historical cost-idea, has such a great influence upon South-African industries that confusion in respect of the nonnative conception, which is being approved of in this script, may easily occur.