expenses

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The word overhead is used in colloquial German as a synonym for costs , costs or expenses . In the commercial and scientific terminology, the use of the word is unusual. The term is used in legal texts such as Section 581 of the German Commercial Code and in Appendix 1 of the Insurance Supervision Act .

Linguistic

The prefix “un” has several meanings in German, of which the formation of a negation in nouns ( “impossibility” ) does not apply at expense. But the designation of a numerically not quite comprehensible size (" vast amount ") and the meaning of "un" in augmentative formations for "particularly strong" as in " storms " are applicable to expenses. The Duden uses the word for "unforeseen avoidable costs that arise in addition to the normal, planned expenses".

Business administration

The philosopher Christian Wolff stated in 1769 that "expenses are part of the expenses ( Latin expensas )". Friedrich Heinrich Wilhelm Ihring clarified in 1801 that a trading expenses book was necessary "in order to note down in it the little things to be paid for almost daily." In 1899, the business economist Eugen Schmalenbach used the pair of terms “primary expenses” for today's proportional costs and “secondary expenses” for today's fixed costs in an article in the Deutsche Metallindustriezeitung . Carl Moritz Lewin recognized in 1912 that the calculation becomes more accurate, "the more we start to break down the expenses according to the individual branches of the company and their individual workshops". In 1927, Hans Brasch investigated the behavior of “expenses” (today overheads ). It was not until the 1920s and 1930s that the concept of expenses was slowly displaced in business administration. Today overhead costs are often referred to as "expenses" by laypeople only .

Others

Contribution to expenses is a colloquial term used to describe a contribution to cover costs . This term is also not part of commercial or business terminology.

Web links

Wiktionary: Expenses  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Wiktionary: Contribution to expenses  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. Der Duden, Article Expenses
  2. ^ Christian Wolff, Principles of Natural and International Law , 1769, p. 315
  3. ^ Friedrich Heinrich Wilhelm Ihring, The practical merchant or instruction on the entire commercial science , 1801, p. 49
  4. Eugen Schmalenbach, Bookkeeping and Calculation in Factory Business , unaltered reprint 1928, p. 8
  5. ^ Carl Moritz Lewin, Theory and Practice of Industrial Cost Calculation , 1912, p. 21
  6. Hans Brasch, On the practice of fluctuations in expenses and their recording , in: Betriebswirtschaftliche Rundschau, 1927, p. 67
  7. Werner Zimmermann / Hans-Peter Fries / Gero Hoch, Betriebliches Accounting , 2003, p. 158