Waste Accounting?
To search this forum for keywords, type your keywords in the "Forums Search" box on the right. To search specific forum topics, click the "Advanced Search" link on the right.
We are currently changing our university accounting system over to Banner and wanted to include more in depth break down options for waste removal costs. What sorts of waste does your accounting department have or do you wish you had?
Hi Andrea,
My money based-training was as and economist not an accountant but let me take a stab at this to see if this helps or at least spurs further discussion.
I have not worked directly in banner, so I can't promise that it has the capability to track this stuff, but here are a few of the accounting things that I wish I had been able to more easily track over the years or been better in sync with our budget/accounting folks:
-
Depreciation of capital costs and appreciation of replacement capital costs. Too often I have had equipment or vehicles that were seen as a one-time cost or in some cases were even grant funded. Somehow, they never ended up viewed in the accounting system as something that depreciated over time or eventually needed to be replaced. I wonder if better tracking that in the accounting system would have led to less frustration on both sides.
-
Related to #1, better tracking of the full costs of in-house collection, including labor, depreciated capital costs, fuel costs, and tip fees/revenues (depending on whether we paid to dispose of stuff or in the case of recycling got paid for it). Too often in my experience the decision whether to keep collection in house or contract out is a philosophical one (one way or the other) and one too often done with incomplete information. Better tracking of the full costs of in-house collection would better enable folks to evaluate and debate the benefits and costs of both options.
-
Whether it tracks them like an economist (which I would prefer) or tracks them like an accountant (in which case it might take longer to cull out the information), I think it would be beneficial to track recycling both in terms of revenues and avoided disposal costs (especially if they are part of separate operations). I think this would allow for both better initial decision-making and to track the impacts of decisions made.
Hope this helps to at least get this conversation started.
Forums Supporters
AASHE would like to thank the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment for support in developing the Forums, and recognize and thank the organizations below as official Campus Sustainability Discussion Forums Supporters:
Hi Andrea,
Are you getting any feedback to this? This is quite interesting to me. Please reply to darrellb@pdx.edu
Also, are you going to the AASHE conference in LA in October?
Thanks,
Darrell Brown
Portland State University