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1. The necessity of establishing human resource accounting in China.

1. Demand of users of financial information. With the advent of the era of knowledge economy, human resource factors have an increasing influence on the success or failure of enterprise management, and investors' demand for human resource information is also increasing, which is the most fundamental driving force for the existence and development of human resource accounting.

2. The need of internal management. The current accounting accounts for the expenditure of human resources investment in the current period, and does not provide information on human resources investment and its changes, the economic effect of human resources investment and the economic value of human resources separately, which cannot meet the information needs of human resources management and control.

3. The need of national macro-control. Through the information provided by human resource accounting, the government can understand the maintenance and development of human resources in the whole society; At the same time, the government can also use tax and other means to encourage enterprises to increase investment in human resources in order to maintain the stamina of social and economic development.

4. financial accounting principles's request. In fact, considering the accounting principles alone, there are many shortcomings in the current human resources accounting treatment. On the one hand, counting human resources investment into current expenses violates the accrual principle. The investment expenditure of enterprises on human resources investment often has a payback period of more than one accounting period, which belongs to capital expenditure. According to the accrual basis principle, it should be capitalized first and then amortized in different income periods. However, the current accounting practice is to treat all expenses as current expenses. This practice is understandable in the era of industrial economy, because on the one hand, the proportion of human resources accounting investment in the total investment is too small, and the importance of human resources is difficult to reflect; On the other hand, the benefit period of human resources investment expenditure is different, and its benefit degree is more difficult to measure. However, when the era of knowledge economy is coming and the proportion of human resources investment is increasing, if all human resources expenditures are included in the current expenses, it will inevitably lead to serious distortion of accounting information. On the other hand, expensing human resources investment expenditure will inevitably make the profit and loss reports of each period untrue and lead to decision-making mistakes. Treating all human resources expenditures as current expenses will inevitably lead to underestimation of current profits and mistakes in decision-making; At the same time, when the enterprise lays off a large number of employees, the unamortized human resources investment expenditure should be included in the current expenses as the loss of human resources flow, but the current accounting can not reflect this loss, which is not conducive to the correct decision-making of operators. Therefore, from the perspective of following accounting principles, it is also necessary to implement human resource accounting.

It can be seen that it is imperative to implement human resource accounting from the perspective of meeting the requirements of information demanders and maintaining accounting principles.

Two. Contents of human resource accounting.

(A) the confirmation of human resources accounting

The so-called human resources of an enterprise refers to the general term of laborers' abilities that can promote the development of the whole enterprise. The most essential difference between human resource accounting and traditional accounting is that human resource accounting regards human resource investment as an asset. Therefore, if we want to talk about human resource accounting, we must first involve whether human resource investment can be capitalized! This point has always been the focus of debate among accounting scholars. Although there has been a lot of discussion on this issue, different people have different views on it, because this issue is the key to the existence of human resource accounting, so the author thinks it is necessary to discuss it.

The so-called assets refer to the economic resources owned or controlled by enterprises, which can be measured in money and bring future economic benefits, including all kinds of property, creditor's rights and other rights. Let's analyze whether human resources investment can be capitalized one by one according to the main points of asset definition: First, human resources are economic resources that can bring future economic benefits to enterprises. Human resources refer to people's working ability, not the workers themselves, and this ability of workers can obviously bring benefits in the future, which is beyond doubt. Some scholars believe that the future benefits provided by human resources for enterprises are difficult to be reasonably predicted and determined like fixed assets, so human resources are not assets. We believe that "providing certainty of future benefits" is not a necessary condition for economic resources to be recognized as assets. In fact, the economic benefits brought by intangible assets cannot be accurately determined in advance, but we still regard it as an asset, so why can't we treat human resources equally? Secondly, human resources can be measured by money. This is because the investment in human resources, such as recruitment fees, training fees, insurance fees, wages and welfare fees, are all reflected in the form of money, which makes it possible to measure the value of human resources relatively objectively with money. Finally, human resources can also be actually controlled by enterprises. Scholars who oppose the capitalization of human resources believe that human resources are the labor ability of laborers, and their ownership belongs to laborers, while enterprises cannot own the ownership of laborers, so they cannot own and control human resources. This view is wrong. In fact, Marx has already discussed this point in Das Kapital. Marx believed that after the capital household hired laborers from the market, it actually gained the right to use the labor force for future laborers for a period of time, and this right was fixed in the form of contracts. Capitalists buy laborers, not laborers. Therefore, in this sense, once a laborer is hired by a capitalist, his labor force has actually been controlled by the capitalist (because before the labor contract is terminated, the laborer can no longer freely sell his labor force to others), and at the same time, the capitalist does not need to own the individual ownership of the laborer. Therefore, human resources can be owned and controlled by enterprises.

To sum up, the enterprise's investment in human resources, which is the carrier of human resources, is an investment that can be measured by money, the power to obtain the expected return, and the power that the enterprise can control and use, so it can be defined as accounting assets.

In particular, I think human assets are intangible assets. This is because we know that intangible assets refer to non-monetary assets without physical form and have the following characteristics: (1) without physical form; (2) Assets used to produce goods or provide services, leased to others or owned for administrative management; (3) Assets that can provide economic benefits for the enterprise in more than one accounting period; And (4) the future economic benefits provided are extremely uncertain. Corresponding to the definition and characteristics of intangible assets, we can find that the characteristics of human assets are quite consistent with those of intangible assets: first, human assets have no physical form, although employees in enterprises have physical form, human assets refer to the service potential of employees, and this potential has no physical form, so people, the carrier of human assets, must not be confused with human assets themselves; Secondly, human assets can be used to produce goods, provide services, rent or be used for administrative management. Undoubtedly, human assets can bring future economic benefits. Thirdly, the benefit period of human assets usually exceeds one accounting period, and the expenses such as employees' wages with less than one accounting period are generally directly included in the current profit and loss without capitalization; Finally, the economic benefits provided by human assets have great uncertainty, because: on the one hand, it is difficult to estimate how much benefits human assets can bring; On the other hand, due to the great mobility of talents, it is difficult to determine the benefit period of human assets, so the economic benefits provided by human assets are extremely uncertain.

Based on the above reasons, I think human assets should belong to intangible assets.

(B) the accounting of human resources accounting

The accounting of human resource accounting mainly involves the accounting of human investment, the collection and distribution of human resource costs, the amortization of human assets and the confirmation of human asset losses. According to the above requirements, the following basic account should be established:

(1) The "Human Assets" account generally reflects the increase or decrease of human assets. Its debit reflects the increase of human assets, the credit reflects the decrease of human assets, and the balance is generally in the debit, reflecting the historical cost and replacement cost of existing human assets. This course sets detailed accounts according to employee categories.

(2) In the subject of "Cumulative Amortization of Human Assets", the lender reflects the amortization amount of human assets calculated at a certain amortization rate, the borrower reflects the cumulative amortization amount of employees who quit the enterprise due to retirement, resignation and other reasons, and the balance represents the cumulative amortization amount of existing human assets. This course should set corresponding detailed accounts according to the corresponding detailed accounts of human assets.

(3) The subjects of "Acquisition Cost of Human Assets" and "Development Cost of Human Assets" are transitional subjects of costing nature, which are used to classify and collect enterprises' investment in human assets. Debit reflects the actual amount of investment expenditure, credit reflects the amount transferred to "Human Assets" and the ending balance is debit, indicating the investment in employees who are still in the acquisition and training stage.

(4) The subject of "Human Capital" is used to reflect the corresponding subject of "Human Capital" when employees are transferred from related parties for free, and to reflect the source of investment. When employees leave the enterprise, the corresponding amount of "human capital" account should be transferred to "non-operating income" account.

In particular, the "human capital" account should belong to the owner's equity account and can be replaced by the "capital reserve" account. There is a view that this account is neither an owner's equity account nor a liability account, and it is listed between liabilities and owner's equity on the balance sheet. This part of the rights and interests should be owned by employees, and employees should also be transferred out when they leave the enterprise. This view is wrong. In fact, it is a turn-over of "enterprise shares" in the early stage of joint-stock reform. In fact, there is no third kind of rights and interests except the owner's rights and interests and the creditor's rights.

(C) the measurement of human resources accounting

Capitalization of human resources involves the valuation of human assets, and there are two popular views on the valuation of human assets. The first view is that human assets should be accounted for as the value of human assets according to all the actual human resources investment expenditures in the process of acquisition, maintenance and development. Because these expenditures exist, it is objective and convenient to account for them. This method is called cost method, which is divided into historical cost method, replacement cost method and replacement cost method. Another method holds that human assets should be accounted for according to their actual value, not according to their expenditure, because the expenditure in the process of acquiring, maintaining and developing human resources is often inconsistent with the actual value of human assets, because a considerable part of the expenditure of human resources is often borne by the government in the form of public expenditure, and enterprises do not bear this part of the cost, so supporters of this view believe that, The accounting information reflected by cost method is untrue and incomplete, and human assets should be accounted according to their actual value, so this method is called value method, which can be divided into group value mode and individual value mode according to different measurement modes. The above two views have their own reasons. After years of development, human resource accounting has gradually formed two branches-human resource cost accounting and human resource value accounting. The following two branches are introduced respectively:

1. human resource cost accounting

Human resource investment expenditure is the total expenditure incurred by an accounting entity to acquire, maintain and develop human resources, which mainly includes the following three parts: (1) human resource acquisition expenditure. Refers to the expenses incurred by the accounting entity in order to obtain certain human resources, including: recruitment expenses, which refer to the expenses incurred in order to attract job seekers, such as recruitment advertising fees, agency fees, travel expenses, reception fees, materials fees, etc. ; Selection expenditure refers to all kinds of expenses incurred in the process of selecting ideal employees from candidates, such as expenses incurred during interviews, experience fees, salaries and bonuses of staff engaged in recruitment, etc. Post-fixing fee refers to all one-time expenses incurred in arranging the hired employees to suitable jobs, such as placement fee, registration fee and reception fee. In particular, it should also include the cost of special equipment required by specific employees, because these special equipment are often ordered according to individual requirements, and once this employee leaves the enterprise, others may not be able to use these equipment at all, so it should be included in the cost of human resources acquisition. (2) Maintenance of human resources expenditure refers to various recurrent expenditures incurred by enterprises to keep employees working in enterprises, including salary bonus, labor health care expenditure, medical care expenditure, social insurance expenditure, personnel management expenditure, etc. (3) Expenditure on developing human resources refers to various expenses incurred by enterprises to improve the quality of employees, including pre-job training expenses, and refers to various expenses such as trainee fees and training fees incurred to enable employees to have the skills needed to complete specific jobs and adapt to specific job requirements; On-the-job training expenditure refers to the expenses incurred before employees reach proficiency; Off-the-job training expenses refer to the expenses incurred in off-the-job learning in order to improve the quality of employees and make them adapt to the requirements of new jobs, such as teachers' salaries, students' salaries during training, material expenses, travel expenses, accommodation fees and tuition fees.

All the above expenses should not be capitalized as human resource costs. Only those expenses whose benefit period exceeds one year can be capitalized. Generally speaking, we usually capitalize the expenditure on human resources acquisition and development, and the maintenance expenditure is included in the current profit and loss according to the traditional financial accounting practice, but the one-time maintenance expenditure with a large amount can also be included in the prepaid expenses and included in the profit and loss by stages.

As mentioned above, the current accounting does not ask about the nature of expenditure, and all human resources expenditures are included in the current profit and loss, which is obviously unreasonable. Human resource accounting is to change this practice and make accounting information more real and relevant.

Although the capitalization of human resources investment expenditure is only the capitalization of the above expenditure, in practice, according to different pricing standards, it can be divided into three categories, namely historical cost method, replacement cost method and opportunity cost method. Historical cost method is to capitalize the above-mentioned purchase, construction, maintenance and development expenses according to their actual amount, which is more objective and convenient; Replacement cost method refers to the cost of regaining the same human assets as before. The information provided by this method is more relevant in decision-making, but the criteria for determining what the same human assets are and how much the replacement cost is are too subjective, which limits its application scope. Opportunity cost method is based on the economic losses suffered by enterprises when employees leave their jobs. Its advantage is that the opportunity cost is close to the actual economic value of human assets. However, the scope of application of this method is too narrow, mainly applicable to some important employees with professional and technical capabilities, but not to ordinary employees (because the resignation of ordinary employees often does not bring too much economic losses, even if there is, it is seriously inconsistent with the actual value of employees, so it cannot be accounted for).

In addition, since human resources are assets, it naturally involves amortization. I think the amortization of human assets should be accelerated, and the amortization period can be amortized according to the term of the labor contract, and there is no residual value at the end of the period. The reason why the accelerated amortization method is adopted is mainly because of the great liquidity of human assets and the uncertainty of future income. From the perspective of the principle of conservatism, the accelerated amortization method should be adopted (that is, more amortization in the early stage and less amortization in the later stage). Its specific amortization method is similar to the accelerated depreciation method of fixed assets, such as the sum of years method and the double declining balance method.

2. Value accounting of human resources

The measurement mode of human resource value can be roughly divided into two categories: group value measurement mode and individual value measurement mode, as follows:

(1) group-valued measurement model. Advocates of this model believe that the value of human resources refers to the value of human resources accounting in an organization. As a member of an organization, human resource accounting cannot measure its value without the organization, and the sum of individual values does not necessarily equal the value of the organization. Therefore, they believe that human resource value accounting should measure the value of the group, not the value of the individual. For this reason, they put forward the methods of measuring group value by non-purchasing goodwill method and economic value method: non-purchasing goodwill method, which holds that the excess profits obtained by enterprises above the industry average level should be regarded as part or all of the contribution of human resources, and the value of human resources is the result of capitalization of this part of excess profits (human resources value = excess profits/average return on investment of the whole society); The economic value method holds that the value of human resources should be the result of capitalizing the corresponding part of the total present value of income according to the proportion of human resources investment in the total investment after discounting the future income of enterprises.

(2) Personal value measurement model. Supporters of this model believe that the human resources of an organization are the sum of individual values, and only by obtaining individual values first can the value of an organization be obtained. Moreover, many decisions of enterprises are individual-centered, and obtaining personal value information is more relevant to enterprise decisions. The commonly used method of this model is the future salary discount adjustment method, which holds that the value of human resources = the present value of future salary payment × the average efficiency ratio, the present value of future salary payment = ∑ [Si/( 1+R) ∧ I], and the average efficiency ratio = ∑ [(I× RFi/REi) ∑ I]. Index method is based on the value of human resources in the base period and an index to calculate the value of human assets of enterprises in the next few years. It should be pointed out that the group value measurement model and the individual value measurement model complement each other, and the group value measurement model is mainly used to evaluate the value of group human resources, such as teams and groups, workshops, etc. Personal value model is suitable for personal value evaluation of employees, and each has its own emphasis.

The above introduces the basic contents of human resource cost accounting and human resource value, so what is their relationship in accounting practice? Personally, I think that under normal circumstances, the capitalization of human resources should adopt the method of human resource cost accounting. This is because, on the one hand, under the condition of market economy, the principle of equivalent exchange is followed, so the price of human resources formed through fair market competition can reflect the value of human resources to the greatest extent, so the cost calculation method of actual expenses will not cause serious deviation between the book value of human assets and its actual value; On the other hand, the cost method is more convenient to obtain data, and the obtained data is more objective, which can prevent managers from using the subjectivity of processing methods to tamper with data and whitewash statements; Furthermore, although the cost method does not cover all costs, such as government expenditure, the parts it does not cover are mainly some public products. For any enterprise, this part of the cost does not need to be spent, in other words, this part is a cost-free resource for the enterprise, just like sunshine and air, and it is not necessary for enterprise human resource accounting to reflect this. Therefore, human resource cost accounting should be the mainstream of human resource accounting. However, the value accounting of human resources is not without its merits. In some special cases, such as free transfer to human resources, if the cost method is chosen, the actual expenditure cost of human resources is too different from the actual value of human assets, while the value method is more objective and true. The entry at this time is: debit: human assets.

Credit: the acquisition cost of human resources (recording the actual expenditure of human resources)

Human capital (recording the difference between human assets and labor costs)

In addition, human resource value accounting is more widely used in financial evaluation and business decision-making than human resource cost accounting.

(4) human resource accounting report

For the report of human assets, we think it should be divided into two parts: internal report and external report, which are introduced separately below.

1. External report. On the one hand, in the balance sheet, the relevant information of human assets should be listed separately under intangible assets, including the original value, amortization value and net value of human assets. On the other hand, in the notes, the status of human resources should be revealed in detail from both dynamic and static aspects. From the dynamic aspect, we should disclose the total amount of human resources investment in the current period, the investment direction, the proportion of the total investment and other data. From the static point of view, we should report the proportion of human resources in the total assets of the enterprise, the educational background composition and professional titles of the employees, so as to show the whole picture of human resources in the enterprise.

2. Internal report. The content of the internal report should be divided into two parts. One part is non-monetary information, mainly about the composition, distribution and utilization of human resources in enterprises, especially for some important talents introduced at high cost. The other part is monetary information, mainly the present value of human resources in each responsibility center of the enterprise; Input-output ratio of human resources; For some important talents with high cost, their costs and benefits should be analyzed separately to determine their return on investment.

Three. Conditions for establishing human resource accounting in China

In addition to further strengthening theoretical research and improving the theoretical system of human resource accounting, the full implementation of human resource accounting in China should also meet the following conditions:

1. Legalization of human resources. The human resources owned by enterprises should be confirmed by laws and regulations, and their exchange should be regulated by certain laws to ensure the ownership of the labor force of employees employed by enterprises; There should also be corresponding punishment measures for employees who leave their jobs in violation of contracts to ensure the relative stability of human resources in enterprises.

2. Vigorously develop and improve the human resources market. The human resource market has two meanings to the development of human resource accounting: on the one hand, a perfect human resource market can provide reasonable market prices for talents, thus providing a basis for accounting; On the other hand, the existence of a perfect human resources market enables people to flow freely and enterprises to obtain the needed talents freely. Only at this time can the society have a real and realistic demand for human resource information, and human resource accounting has its social foundation. At present, although the talent market and labor market in China have developed, they are still far from perfect, and the entrepreneur market almost does not exist. It is imperative to establish and improve the human resources market as soon as possible.

3. Carry out pilot work to prepare for the large-scale promotion of human resource accounting. Schools, hospitals, accounting firms, law firms, scientific research institutions, high-tech enterprises and other human resource-intensive units can be selected to accumulate experience, which not only promotes the development of theory, but also prepares for the full implementation of human resource accounting.

At present, the research on human resource accounting in China is not perfect in theory. Most of the theories come from the translation of western works and are not closely related to the national conditions. The full implementation of human resource accounting has a long way to go, which requires the unremitting efforts of theoretical and practical workers.