Accounting is what it is, lean or not. Accounting basics consists of sales minus expenses equals profit/loss conforming to GAAP, generally accepted accounting principles. Lean accounting practices therefore can be stated as reducing daily entries/transactions, processes and chart of accounts to the simplest waste-free form as possible to suit your business reality.
 
Evolving through many years traditional accounting practices as we know it have been altered by personnel creating their own accounting rules, ultimately manipulating the numbers to satisfy, hide or otherwise cover-up the true accounting picture, possibly without realization of the devastating outcome. Most manufacturing managers will disagree with the accounting reports or can’t relate to the numbers, mainly because they don’t represent what is actually happening in the manufacturing process.
 
Now, in with the new lean accounting hype fooling most to believe it will radically change/transform the accounting world as we know it. As I said earlier accounting is what it is so don’t fall in the lean accounting trap. Yes, accounting needs to get back to the basics, this can be done by reducing wasted transactions in every process and eliminating variance transactions making it as simple as possible yet giving a true daily accounting of reality. I strongly believe QuickBooks is about as simple as you can get, that’s only my opinion so take it for what its worth. But should we really call this process lean accounting? Or does it matter - the same may be true of lean manufacturing.
 
Lean accounting should not be confused with accounting for lean. Accounting for lean can best be stated as “Synchronizing lean manufacturing methods with lean accounting practices”. This is where you will see the radical profound change in operations management systems, such as value stream costing P&L’s, resource factoring along with accountings guiding principles and key lean metrics measurements. What I am talking about here is the cultural change that accounting has to achieve transitioning to a pro-active profit center teaming with the lean environment of the enterprise as a whole. So don’t be fooled proceed with caution.