I have now finished a new section for my commercial arm: introduction to bookkeeping and accounting: four PDF files, four Excel files. This is a general introduction that assumes some knowledge of bookkeeping but takes you through the ideas step by step with loads of exmples and the Excel files help to confirm uour learning and provide you with infinite practise: honest, you've got to see it to believe it. Only £10 ... designed to help you with your ACCA exams (Paper 1.1 eg), CIMA exams, University exams, A level exams ... and real life! Go to my eShop Window and see what it's all about. The best on the web at the price: you really would pay a vast amount more elsewhere. DW

Katie wanted to know where she could find out about absorption and marginal costing. Yours truly provided the following listing: Dear Katie, Here are a few links to get you started on absorption and marginal costing. This page compares process costing and absorption and marginal costing Here's an article from the examiner of ACCA Paper 1.2 that's worth a look A PowerPoint Presentation ... it starts with a spelling mistake! Rather a childish look at the topic, from Cambridge University, surprisingly: it's a PowerPoint Presentation. Test your knowledge with Drury on line ... an MCQ test on this topic A very short overview The ever brilliant Biz/ed has a worksheet with links to their virtual factory that might be of use A reasonably extensive and useful looking introduction An exam paper from the University of Teesside that will help you with your revision at least! I have a page on this topic, of course! Finally, this looks useful There you are Katie, a review of some of the basic sites that can help with absorption and marginal costing. Best wishes DW

Is all ecommerce this difficult? Trying to get a client up and running with PayPal has turned into a challenge for her! ecommerce is based on brilliant and simple ideas but I have found the reality to be a real struggle. Everything's click, click but the final hurdles are sometimes so huge! I've been in the ecommerce game for around 6 weeks now and already I have stories to make your hair curl!! DW

Mario's a deep thinking lad from Italy and this is what we talked about. Dear Mr. Duncan I am an Italian student from Rome university and I am doing my final dissertation on cost of capital for telecoms and on the different approaches in calculating WACC. I was wondering if it was possible to have some research on the differences between the different CAPM's models (linear, non-linear and multifactors models). I found a study done by Wright, Mason and Miles on the subject but it seems to have a very statistic view about the CAPM's models. Could you please, if possible send me any presentation (power point) or study that explains in a more economic way why we should use a model rather then an other to better calculate the cost of capital for telecoms? Thank you in advance for all your patience and help Best Regards Mario I asked for a bit of time! Dear Duncan, I think that the only parameters that can vary are beta, risk free and ERP. What evidence can I use to make these parameters vary? Is it possible? Which are the latest methods for estimating the risk-free rate and ERP? There's some debate on-going as to what both have been doing recently, after a long period over which the ERP appeared to be stable. There's considerable room for disagreement about betas, related to the standard criticisms of the CAPM, and also disagreements about what frequency of data to use, whether to include parts of firms that are overseas or regulated, and so on. In contrast to all this, the debt-based component of the WACC is relatively straightforward to calculate; although regulators are suggesting that optimal rather than actual capital structure should be used for calculating the WACC for regulatory purposes. Thank you again Best Regards Mario Here's what I found: Dear Mario, I am sorry to be late but I have had a web site crisis! Anyway, I don’t know how much I can help but here are a few resources I have found on the CAPM: Revisiting The Capital Asset Pricing Model by Jonathan Burton looks non statistical at least but it is a bit old now! Aimed at investors so it is general but it has some graphs and basic formulae. Again for investors but with some additional links to people who seem to be important in this area business.com has a fair number of articles that you can access and I think at least some of them will be useful. Here’s a rather cheesy CAPM calculator but take a look at the links on the right hand side of the page! This is probably too basic for you but ... A mighty PDF file from Canada called The Capital Asset Pricing Model: Equity Risk Premiums and the Privately held Business. Another one from Canada This might be a useful link for you: to someone’s Blog! Worth a try: strike up a conversation with him at least! Specifically for telecoms, I found one, two (this is just a summary, though), three (79 pages from London!), four (Australian) and five , a whopping 154 pages from OFTEL in the UK I hope that’s enough to get you started, Mario. Let me know if you think I can help in any other way. Best wishes DW

Wow! A week has flown since I last communicated! Had a problem with my very first online payment via PayPal that is as yet unresolved and that could scupper everything I'm trying to do to earn a living. Bleeders! DW

Which animal will invade a garden over night and launch itself at some pots that contain potting compost replete with seeds that are germinating but that have yet to show their leafy heads and proceed to dig out the middle of every single pot? Well, when I find that animal, it's for it. I had a tray of 30 pots all so filled that were all so emptied on Wednesday night. Bleeder! I'll spiflicate it if I get it. DW

Celebrity spotting? Mrs W got very excited at Heathrow yesterday as we waited for Dima to get back from France and up popped Liz Hurley complete with baby and nanny(?). She needs to do some work on her bottom or her jeans as said bottom didn't fill the jeans in the same way that the rest of her body fills the rest of her clothes! Her husband/boyfriend, turned up later in a wheelchair and Mrs W wasn't impressed: Liz, you could have done better for yourself! DW

Lovely weather again although I'm as stuck in my office as everyone else. Since I work at home, though, I can potter around the garden for a break as and when I need a break. DW

Went to Bath on Easter Monday and was really surprised to see that the majority of building in the centre of the city are genuine Georgian: up to 250 years old or so. A marvellous looking place. The royal crescent and circus are spectacular and well worth the voyeuristic visit. I heard that one house on the royal crescent sells for £2 million: ridiculous! Had a decent meal at the Arabesque Lebanese restaurant in the Podium Centre: I like what I've seen of Lebanese food and this was a buffet worth trying out and it wasn't that expensive either. Had a shock at the Roman Baths: they wanted £8.50 EACH for us to go in ... we didn't. The city bus tour wanted £7 EACH for us to sit on their bus as they whizzed us round the city ... we didn't. Nice city, tourists beware of the serious damage that can be done to your wallet. DW

A message to small business people the world over. This is what happened last week. Our shower sprang a very small leak. I offered to repair it but Mrs W was aghast at that so she found a plumber/tiler to do the job. He turned up, kept his baseball cap on as he came in the house, quoted for the job and promised to return on Friday. Friday came and so did he: baseball cap stayed firmly on his head and when he said he'd finished Mrs W carried out an inspection and asked him to tidy up a small part of the work he'd done to a fairly poor looking standard. After rolling his eyes heavenwards he launched off into a tirade about customers like us! He increased his price, too, on the basis of materials costs. He won't be back ... ever! DW

A small crop of questions shows the value of www.duncanwil.co.uk! Katie still wants to know when my financial accounting pages will be ready to buy: Dear Katie, I'm working on it! I have spent a very frustrating time trying to sort out my eshop and have found ecommerce "experts" are almost useless in terms of what they will do for free. That is now behind me and I will be posting three management accounting sections for sale later today. I will then begin working on your suggestion and would estimate that within the week I will have a completed package. OK? Thanks for remembering: your exam in early in June isn't it? Plenty of time to stay with me and succeed!! Graeme is a Benford's Law geek like me and he asked Duncan, I have an interest in the practical application of Benson's Law to catch financial fraud. Do you have, or know of a a website that has a downloadable spreadsheet for Benford's law that I could run my own data series through? Regards Graeme Here's what I was able to do for him: Dear Graeme, I mess around with Benford's Law from time to time and develop my own spreadsheets. I have attached one of my spreadsheets: let me know if you find it difficult to work and I'll explain! Best wishes Finally for now, Frank wanted the complete case; power point presentation, tables for all days' output and the weekly combined total, solutions. Frank I sent it to him! More glorious weather forecast for today! DW

Good news everyone! I have now finally got my eShop open for business. If you are in the least bit interested in GCSE Business Studies examinations for the coming Summer series, you NEEEEEED to take a look here Case Study Shop Window for full details and Business Studies Shop to buy and pay by using the highly secure PayPal system It has taken too long to get this shop up and running but it's there now and over the next few days you will find three or four major new management accounting resources for sale ... watch this space. DW

Tony replied and said: Hi Duncan, Once again, you hit the nail on the head. Thanks Tony There you go! DW

Flushed with success, Tony came back with a request for information on goal congruence in budgetary control systems. Well, without being too specifc, I decided to research goal congruence in general and let Tony pick the bones out of it! Here's an almost anaonymous page that compares the Balanced ScorCard with GE's famous 8 key result areas: when you go to that page you'll see why I say it's almost anonymous. This PDF file looks good: a fancy tile in academicese but the content looks good: Graham Francis provided an NHS based example for my book! This pave has a huge number of ideas that relate to budgeting and other things too. Again, semi anonymous ... people who put together such good resources have the right to tell people who they are: don't be so shy! Elementary but you never know: a presentation on basic budgeting Slightly more advanced but not the bee's knees! Chris Lamb's excellent listings service comes up with another excellent list, on goal congruence this time, of course. Some intriguing diagrams here! Another basic page, another PDF file. Finally, you might find this short page sparks something too! That should be useful, tony! DW

We've had a month of the best daffodils that I've seen: honest, I've found that watering them every day has made them tall and strong and long lasting. That was in the back garden and now the daffodils in the front garden have just started to open, along with the tulips that are there too. Marvellous! Dima's away for the Easter Holiday so Mrs W is giving ME all the jobs that either he normally does or that we normally share! What a life! DW

This morning, the BBC is talking about a meeting of firefighters in England today ... are they the same firefighters who have just swept through Iraq? Just pointing out the nonsense that can arise when clots start to steal language from another culture. We have firefighters x 2 now and they do completely different jobs. Let's go back to firemen and gun fighters! At least we know where we are with those two. DW

Steven wrote a rather cheeky note: Could you please let me know the web site for Canada which can provide information about the following: 1. evolution of accounting in canada 2. accounting standards setting boards in canada 3. accounting professional bodies in canada 4. governmant influence 5. environmental factors cheers Steven Cheeky because it looks like his assignment, nothing more or less. Still, given my come one, come all attitude, I am here to help; and this is what I have found for him. I couldn't find just ONE web site to answer this question, Steven, so here is a good essay to start off with AccountingEducation. It's a teaching guide has been prepared to provide users with an overall understanding of accounting and assurance standards in Canada. You can also go here which is the web site of the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants. There's the Accounting Standards Oversight Council of Canada, too that has a lot to think about. I did a search for accounting professional bodies in canada and found this page from Hong Kong ... scroll down for Canada ... if you're searching for other countries, take a look, there's just a few more! Here's a really useful page from IASPLUS.COM, that fantastic IAS/IFRS based resource that has generally useful pages, too. There you are Steven: a cracking start, I think! DW

Follow up from Tony. He replied as yet another satisfied customer: Hi Duncan, Thank you so much. The material you have found for me is exactly what i'm looking for. Thanks again, Tony Aw, shucks, I'm blushing! DW

Let me put on record just how useless the BBC weather forecasters are. There! Done! They promise sunshine and we get cloud. They promise temperatures that mean we can fry eggs on the pavements, t'flags as we call 'em up North and my new Peach tree ends up half dead from frost bite. They promise 'unusually warm for the time of year' and Mrs W sits in our South facing living room wrapped up in a blanket in the middle of the day. Rubbish. They also tell us 'right now' this and 'right now' that and the glorious weather we're having (as if!) will hold through Thursday ... what on earth does that mean? Rubbish weather forecasting and rubbishEnglish! DW

Tony from Liverpool wanted to know what I could tell him about the Behavioural Aspects of Budgeting This topic is one of those that a search on the internet that returns virtually nothing but syllabuses from Universities, tables of contents or seminar schedules. Here’s the best I could find. Firstly, though, take a look at chapter 14 of my book: Cost & Management Accounting published by Prentice Hall. There’s a set of basic lecture notes from Exeter University at Lecture 16 and Lecture 18 although the author makes the mistake of calling zero base budgeting zero based budgeting in lecture 16: an elementary and unforgivable error. Chris Lamb’s excellent service out of UNL comes up with this massive resource list under the heading of Behavioural Aspects of Budgeting: and under the heading of budgeting and budgetary control Under the heading of organisational goals and Investors in People have an introductory page on this sub topic, too. In spite of what I said at the start of this, here is an academic page that looks very useful as a starting point This is written in academicese so needs to be read carefully. It’s also long and needs to be filtered I have been hearing several people talking about participation and ownership recently in connection with managing change and here are a couple of pages linked to these ideas: not all directly connected with budgeting, but you can extend the ideas: firstly two from yours truly: e budgeting zero base budgeting Here’s a seminar schedule that gives a few ideas: just scroll down to BARRIERS TO SUCCESSFUL BUDGETING A PowerPoint presentation with some good starting points although the author makes the mistake of calling zero base budgeting zero based budgeting: an elementary and unforgivable error. Finally, you might find this useful Best wishes anyway, Tony DW