Accounting for
Manufacturing Businesses

Previous lesson: Perpetual and Periodic Inventory
Next lesson: The Manufacturing Cost Statement

Manufacturing means to make a product, whether by hand or by machine or both. The word manufacture originates from Latin manu facere meaning "make by hand"; (manus = "hand" and facere = "to make").

Unlike trading businesses, manufacturing businesses do not buy products at a low price and sell at a higher price. Instead manufacturing businesses make products, which they then sell.


Here is the income statement for a trading business (including the calculation of the cost of goods sold):

We can see that the cost of the goods sold was determined as follows:

The formula above was based on the calculation of the value of closing inventories:

The income statement for a manufacturing business is a bit different to that of a trading business:

Here is a key term in manufacturing businesses:

Finished goods: Inventories that have been fully manufactured and are ready for sale.


In a manufacturing business the closing value of finished goods are calculated as follows:

The cost of finished goods that were sold (cost of sales) is thus calculated by saying:

Alrighty. So that's manufacturing businesses - not too bad so far, right?

Previous lesson: Perpetual and Periodic Inventory
Next lesson: The Manufacturing Cost Statement

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