Most managers are forced to work from the accountants' monthly statement, and their procedure is accordingly to go through the separate operating statements for several months and take off on scratch pads the figures for the items in which they may be particularly interested at the moment. These figures may have to be added together in order to compare a certain number of months this year with the same months of last year. This work not only takes the time of the highest paid man in the organization, but the hasty scratch-pad figures are likely to contain errors. It is absurd that executive officers should be forced to make their own cross-indexes of the accountant's statement, and not only make these cross-indexes but make them while holding the long-distance telephone or at other rush times when seconds are important.

The information as it comes from the accountant's office should be passed to the man in the executive department whose function it is to provide information for the executive by cross-indexing all information from the accountant's reports and putting this information in the form of curves. The accountant's report would, of course, be filed carefully for future reference purposes if reference is ever necessary, but for the purposes of the executive the curve cards with the figures they contain are sufficient. Not only is the information for any subject shown on the cards as a curve over a long period of time, but the actual figures of the accountant's report are visible in such manner that they may be found instantly and quoted directly from the curve cards without having to refer back month by month to the original figures in the accountant's report.