1. The needs of financial information users. The arrival of the knowledge economy, the human resources factors on the success or failure of the enterprise more and more influence, investors on the demand for human resources information is also more and more, this is the human resources accounting to exist and the development of the most fundamental motivation.

2. Internal management needs. The current accounting will be human resources investment expenditures included in the current cost, do not separately provide information about human resources investment and its changes in the situation, the economic effects of human resources investment and the economic value of human resources, and so on, and therefore can not meet the human resources management and control of the information needs.

3. National macro-control needs. Through the information provided by human resources accounting, the government can understand the whole society's human resources maintenance and development; 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 strength of social and economic development.

4. The requirements of financial accounting principles. In fact, from the accounting principles alone to consider, the current accounting treatment of human resources are also many inappropriate, on the one hand, the investment in human resources is included in the current cost, contrary to the principle of accrual. Enterprises in the human resources investment investment expenditure, its income period often more than an accounting period, belongs to the capital expenditure, in accordance with the principle of the accrual system, should be capitalized, and then amortized in the income period, but the current accounting practice is to be fully expensed, as a current expense recorded in the accounts. Such a practice is still understandable in the industrial economy, because in the industrial economy, on the one hand, the accounting investment in human resources accounted for too small a proportion of the total investment in the amount of human resources is difficult to reflect the importance of human resources; on the other hand, human resources investment expenditures of the benefit of the period of time is not distinguishable, and the extent of its benefits is even more difficult to measure. However, in the knowledge economy era is coming, the proportion of human resources investment is increasing today, and then all the human resources expenditures are charged to the current expenses, will inevitably lead to serious distortion of accounting information. On the other hand, expensing human resource investment expenses will inevitably lead to inaccurate reporting of profit and loss in each period, resulting in poor decision-making. Expensing all human resource expenditures as current expenses will inevitably lead to underestimation of current period's profit, resulting in wrong decision-making; at the same time, when an enterprise lays off a large number of employees, the human resource investment expenditures that have not yet been amortized should be regarded as the loss of human resource turnover and be charged to the current period's expenses, but the current accounting doesn't reflect such loss, which is not conducive to the correct decision-making of the proprietors. Therefore, from the point of view of following accounting principles, it is also necessary to implement human resource accounting.

It can be seen that the implementation of human resource accounting is imperative, both from the point of view of meeting the requirements of information seekers and from the point of view of maintaining accounting principles.

II. The content of human resources accounting.

(I) Recognition of Human Resource Accounting

The so-called human resource of an enterprise is a general term for the ability of laborers who 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, in order to talk about human resource accounting, the first thing to do is to involve whether the investment in human resources can be capitalized! This point has always been the focus of debate among accounting scholars. Although the discussion of this issue has been quite a lot, but in its exposition, is benevolent, wise and wise, because this issue is related to the existence of human resources accounting can be the key, so, I think there is still a need to discuss.

The so-called assets are owned or controlled by the enterprise, can be measured in monetary terms, can bring future economic benefits of economic resources, including a variety of property, debt and other rights. Below we analyze whether the investment in human resources can be capitalized according to the main points of the definition of assets, one by one: first of all, human resources is an economic resource that can bring future economic returns for the enterprise. Human resources refer to the labor capacity of human beings, not the laborers themselves, and there is no doubt that this labor capacity of the laborers can obviously bring future benefits. Some scholars argue that the future benefits provided by human resources to an enterprise are difficult to reasonably anticipate and determine like fixed assets, so human resources are not assets. We believe that the "certainty of future benefits" is not a necessary condition for an economic resource to be recognized as an asset, in fact, the economic benefits of intangible assets can not be accurately determined in advance, but we still regard it as an asset, so why can't we treat human resources the same way? Secondly, human resources can be measured in monetary terms. This is because the investment in human resources, such as recruitment, training, insurance, wages and benefits and other expenditures are reflected in the form of money, which makes it possible to measure the value of human resources in monetary terms in a relatively objective manner. Finally, human resources are also under the actual control of the enterprise. Scholars who are against the capitalization of human resources believe that human resources are the labor power of workers, whose ownership belongs to the workers, and the enterprise can't have the ownership of the workers, and thus can't own and control the human resources. This view is wrong, in fact, about this point, Marx has discussed it in Capital, Marx believes that capitalists use money to hire workers from the market, in fact, gained the right to use the labor force of future workers for a period of time, and this power is fixed in the form of a contract, the capitalist purchased labor force rather than laborers, so in this sense Once a worker is employed by a capitalist, his labor force has been de facto controlled by the capitalist (because until the labor contract is dissolved, the worker is no longer free to sell his labor force to others), while at the same time, the capitalist does not need to have ownership of the worker's person. Therefore, human resources can be owned and controlled by enterprises.

In summary, the enterprise's investment in the carrier of human resources - people is the enterprise to pay for the investment can be measured in monetary terms, is the power to achieve the expected return, is the enterprise can control and utilize, and therefore can be defined as an accounting asset.

In particular, it should be noted that the author believes that human assets are an intangible asset. This is because we know that the so-called intangible assets are non-monetary assets that do not have a physical form, which have the following characteristics: (1) they do not have a physical form (2) they are used in the production of goods or the provision of services, leased to others or owned for administrative purposes (3) they can provide economic benefits for the enterprise for more than one accounting period (4) they provide a great deal of uncertainty about the future economic benefits. Corresponding to the definition and characteristics of intangible assets, we can find that the characteristics of human assets and the definition and characteristics of intangible assets are quite compatible: first of all, the human assets do not have a physical form, the enterprise employees have a physical form, but the human assets refers to the potential of the employees' services, this potential is not in a physical form, it is impossible to put the carrier of human assets -- people and human assets themselves mixed up. -Secondly, human assets are assets that can be used for the production of goods, the provision of services, leased or used for administrative purposes, there is no doubt that human assets can bring future economic benefits; again, the beneficiary period of human assets is usually more than one accounting period, the service period of less than one accounting period of the employee's wages and other expenditures are generally recognized directly in profit or loss for the current period, while the employee's salary and other expenses are generally recognized directly in profit or loss for the current period. In the end, the economic benefits provided by human assets have great uncertainty, because: on the one hand, it is difficult to estimate how much benefit human assets can bring; on the other hand, due to the great mobility of talents, so that the benefit period of human assets is in fact very difficult to determine, so the economic benefits provided by human assets with great uncertainty.

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

(2) Accounting for Human Resource Accounting

Accounting for Human Resource Accounting mainly involves accounting for human investment, pooling and allocation of human resource costs, amortization of human assets, and recognition of loss of human assets. According to the above requirements, the following basic accounts should be set up:

(1) "human assets" account, reflecting the general increase or decrease of human assets. Its debit side reflects the increase of human assets, credit side reflects the decrease of human assets, the balance is generally on the debit side, reflecting the historical cost and replacement cost of the existing human assets, this account is set up according to the category of employees in the detailed accounts.

(2) "Accumulated amortization of human assets" account, the credit side reflects the amortization of human assets calculated at a certain amortization rate, and the debit side reflects the accumulated amortization of employees who have left the company due to retirement, separation, etc. The balance represents the accumulated amortization of the existing human assets, and the account should be set up in accordance with the corresponding sub-accounts of human assets. This account shall be established in accordance with the corresponding human assets ledger account.

(3) The "cost of acquisition of human assets" account and the "cost of development of human assets" account are transitional accounts of a costing nature, which are used to categorize and compile the enterprise's investment in human assets, with the debit side reflecting the actual amount of the investment expenditures and the credit side reflecting the transfer of the investment expenditures. The debit side reflects the actual amount of investment expenditures, and the credit side reflects the amount transferred to the "human assets" account, with the ending balance on the debit side, indicating the investment in employees who are still in the acquisition and training stage.

(4) The "Human Capital" account is used to reflect the source of investment when employees are transferred from related parties without compensation, as a counterpart of "human capital". When employees leave the enterprise, the corresponding amount of the "human capital" account shall be transferred to the "non-operating income" account.

In particular, it should be noted that the "human capital" account should be an owner's equity account, which can be replaced by the "capital surplus" account. There is a view that this account is neither an owner's equity account nor a liability account, which is shown on the balance sheet between liabilities and owner's equity, and this part of the equity should be owned by the employees, and should be transferred out at the same time when the employees leave the enterprise. This view is wrong, in fact, he is the early shareholding reform "enterprise shares" of the flip side, in fact, in addition to owners' equity and creditors' equity within the enterprise does not exist in the third kind of equity.

(C) the measurement of human resources accounting

Capitalization of human resources, it involves the valuation of human assets, and the valuation of human assets, there are mainly the following two popular viewpoints: the first viewpoint that the human assets should be in accordance with the human assets to obtain, maintain, and develop the process of the entire actual consumption of human resources investment expenditures as the value of the human assets in the accounts, because these expenditures are the real existence of the human resources. The first view is that human assets should be recorded according to all actual expenditures on human resources investment in the process of acquisition, maintenance and development of human resources as the value of human assets, because these expenditures exist in reality, and it is both objective and convenient to record them here, which is known as the cost method, which is divided into three methods, namely, recording according to the historical cost, recording according to the replacement cost, and recording according to the opportunity cost. This is due to the fact that a considerable part of the expenditure on human resources is often borne by the government in the form of public ****expenditure, and the enterprise does not bear this part of the cost, so the supporters of this viewpoint believe that the cost method of reflecting the accounting information is untrue, incomplete, and the human assets should be accounted for according to their actual value, so that the method is called the value method, which can be divided into group value model and individual value model, and can be divided into group value model and individual value model according to the measurement mode of the human assets. The value method can be divided into group value model and individual value model. The above two points of view have their own reasons, after years of development gradually formed two major branches of human resources accounting - human resources cost accounting and human resources value accounting, the following two branches are introduced:

1. human resources cost accounting

Human resources investment expenditure is a The accounting entity in order to obtain, maintain and develop all the expenditures incurred by the human resources, including the following three parts: (1) Acquisition of human resources expenditures. It refers to all the expenditures incurred by an accounting entity in order to acquire a certain human resource, specifically including: recruitment expenditures, which refers to the expenses incurred in order to net to attract job-seekers, such as recruitment advertisement fees, intermediary agency handling fees, travel expenses, reception expenses, material expenses, etc., incurred due to recruitment; selection expenditures, which refers to all the expenses incurred in the process of selecting an ideal employee from among the applicants for the recruitment, such as expenses incurred in interviews, experience fees The selection expenditure refers to the expenses incurred in the process of selecting ideal employees from the recruits, such as interview expenses, experience expenses, wages and bonuses of the personnel engaged in the recruitment work, etc.; posting expenditure, the one-time expenses incurred in arranging the recruited employees to the appropriate posts, such as relocation expenses, registration fees, reception fees, etc. It should be noted in particular that it should also include the expenditure on the special equipment required for specific employees to work, this is because these special equipment is often ordered at the request of an individual to tailor the equipment once the employee leaves the enterprise, others may not be able to work at all. This is because such special equipment is often ordered at the request of the individual, and once the employee leaves the enterprise, others may not be able to utilize the equipment at all, so it should be included in the human resources acquisition expenditure. (2) Expenditure on maintenance of human resources refers to all kinds of recurrent expenditures incurred by an enterprise to keep employees working in the enterprise, including salary and bonus expenditures, labor health care expenditures, medical care expenditures, social insurance expenditures, and expenditures of the personnel management department. (3) Development of human resources expenditures, refers to the various expenditures incurred by an enterprise to improve the quality of its employees, including pre-job training expenditures, which refers to the expenditures incurred to equip employees with the skills needed to complete a specific job and to adapt to the requirements of a specific job, such as trainee fees and training costs; on-the-job training expenditures, which refers to the expenditures incurred before an employee achieves a level of proficiency; off-the-job training expenditures, which Refers to off-the-job study, in order to improve the quality of employees, so that they can adapt to the requirements of the new job and the expenditure incurred, such as instructor's salary, trainees should be paid during the training period, materials, travel, accommodation, tuition fees and so on.

The above expenses are not all to be capitalized in the cost of human resources, only those costs that benefit more than one year can be capitalized. Generally speaking, we usually capitalize human resources acquisition and development expenditures, while maintenance expenditures are charged to current profit and loss in accordance with traditional financial accounting practices, but the larger one-time maintenance expenditures can also be charged to amortized expenses, which are charged to profit and loss in stages.

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

Although the capitalization of human resources investment expenditure is to capitalize the above expenditure, but in practice, based on the different valuation standards, can be divided into three categories, the historical cost method, replacement cost method and opportunity cost method. The historical cost method is to capitalize the above acquisition, maintenance and development costs according to their actual incurred amounts, which is more objective and convenient; the replacement cost method, which refers to the cost of re-acquiring the same human assets as the original in the present time, the information provided by this method is more relevant for decision-making, but due to the determination of what is the same human assets, the replacement cost of the actual size of the problem, the determination of the standard, too subjective, thus limiting the scope of its application; the opportunity cost method; and the opportunity cost method. Thus limiting the scope of its application; opportunity cost method, is to make the enterprise employees leave the economic losses suffered by the enterprise, as the basis for the valuation of the enterprise's human assets, the advantage is that the opportunity cost is closer to the actual economic value of the human assets, but the use of this method is too narrow mainly applies to a number of important employees with professional and technical capabilities, for the general staff is not applicable (because the departure of the general staff often does not bring too much economic loss, and even if it does, it will not bring too much economic loss). (because the departure of general employees often does not bring too much economic loss, and even if it does, it is not in line with the actual value of the employee, so it can not be accounted for).

In addition, human resources since it is an asset, naturally involves the issue of amortization, I think the amortization of human assets should be amortized using the accelerated method of amortization, the amortization period can be amortized according to the period of the labor contract, the end of the period without residual value. The main reason for the accelerated method, mainly because of the greater mobility of human assets, future earnings uncertainty, from the perspective of the principle of soundness, the accelerated method of amortization (i.e., more amortization in the early part of the period, less amortization in the later part) should be more desirable. The specific amortization method is similar to the accelerated depreciation of fixed assets, the use of the sum-of-the-years method, double-declining balance method can be.

2. Accounting for the value of human resources

Measurement model of the value of human resources is broadly divided into two categories: the group value measurement model and individual value measurement model, the following sub-division:

(1) group value measurement model. Advocates of this model believe that the value of human resources refers to the value of human resources accounting in the organization, as a member of the organization, human resources accounting can not be measured without the organization's value, and the total of individual value is not necessarily equal to the value of the organization, so they believe that the value of human resources value accounting should be measured by the value of the group rather than the value of the individual, and for this reason they proposed the use of non-acquired goodwill For this reason, they proposed the method of measuring the value of the group by non-acquired goodwill method and economic value method: non-acquired goodwill method, which believes that the excess profit obtained by the enterprise over the average level of the industry should be regarded as the contribution of human resources in part or in full, and the value of human resources is the result of the capitalization of this part of the excess profit, (the value of human resources = the excess profit / the average rate of return of the whole society on investment); economic value method, which believes that the value of human resources should be the result of the future surplus of the enterprise. The value of human resources should be the enterprise's future surpluses discounted, according to the proportion of human resources investment in the total amount of investment, the total present value of the surpluses of the corresponding part of the capitalization of the results.

(2) Personal Value Measurement Model. Advocates of the model that the organization's human resources is the sum of individual value, only first find out the value of the individual, it is possible to find the value of the organization, and many of the enterprise's decision-making is centered on the individual, to obtain the personal value of the information on the enterprise's decision-making is more relevant. Commonly used methods in this model include the discounted future wage compensation adjustment method, which holds that the value of human resources = the present value of future wage payments × the average efficiency ratio, the present value of future wage payments = ∑ [Si / (1 + r) ∧ i], the average efficiency ratio = ∑ [(i × RFi / REi) ÷ ∑ i], and in the above two formulas, Si stands for the wage payment of the i-th year, RFi is the enterprise's i-th year ROI, and REi is the average ROI of the industry in year i. The index method is based on the value of human resources in the base period, and according to a certain index, the value of human assets of the enterprise in the following years is projected. It should be noted that the group value measurement model and the individual value measurement model are complementary to each other, the group value measurement model is mainly used for the evaluation of the value of human resources of the group, such as teams, workshops, etc.; and the individual value model is applicable to the evaluation of the value of a single employee, each with its own focus.

The above introduced the basic content of human resources cost accounting and human resources value, then they are in the accounting practice in the interrelationship in the end how? I personally believe that, under normal circumstances, the capitalization of human resources should be used in the method of human resources cost accounting, this is because, on the one hand, under the conditions of the market economy, follow the principle of equivalence of exchange, so through the formation of fair market competition in the price of human resources can reflect the value of human resources to the greatest extent possible close to the actual expenditure of the cost of human resources will not result in a serious deviation from the book value of human assets and its actual value; on the other hand, the actual value of human assets will not result in a serious deviation from the book value of human assets. On the other hand, the cost method is more convenient for obtaining data, and the data obtained are more objective, which can prevent the operating personnel from utilizing the subjectivity of the processing method to tamper with the data and whitewash the statements; furthermore, although the cost method fails to cover all the costs, such as government expenditures, etc., the portion that it fails to cover is mainly the products of public ***, which is a part of the cost that does not need to be expended by any one enterprise. Expenditures, in other words, this part of the enterprise is no cost resources, as sunshine, air, enterprise human resources accounting is not necessary to reflect. Therefore, HR cost accounting should be the mainstream of HR accounting. But the value of human resources accounting is not useless, in some special circumstances, such as gratuitous transfer of human resources, then if you choose to use the cost method, the actual cost of human resources expenditure and the actual value of human assets is too large a difference, and the use of the value of the law is more objective, the authenticity of the entry at this time as follows: Borrowing: human assets

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

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

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

In addition, the value of human resources accounting in the financial evaluation, business decision-making in the use of human resources, compared with human resources cost accounting is also more extensive.

(D) Reporting of Human Resource Accounting

We believe that the reporting of human assets should be divided into two parts: internal reporting and external reporting, which are described below.

1. External reporting. On the one hand, in the balance sheet, under intangible assets, the human assets should be shown separately, including the original value of human assets, amortized value, net value and other data. On the other hand, in the notes, from the dynamic and static two aspects of the human resources situation in detail, from the dynamic aspect, should reveal the additional human resources investment in the reporting period of the total amount of investment, the direction of investment, accounting for the proportion of the total investment in the current period, and other data; from the static aspect, should be reported in the human resources to the ratio of the total assets of the enterprise, the enterprise staff's academic composition, titles and so on, in order to show the whole picture of the enterprise's human resources.

2. Internal report. The content of the internal report should be divided into two parts, one is non-monetary information, mainly the enterprise's human resources composition, distribution and utilization of the situation, especially for some high-cost introduction of important talents, should focus on revealing. The other part is monetary information, mainly the present value of human resources in each responsibility center of the enterprise; human resources input-output ratio; for some high-cost introduction of important talents, should be analyzed separately for its cost and the benefits it creates, in order to determine its rate of return on investment.

Three. Human resources accounting in China to establish the conditions

China's human resources accounting for the full implementation of human resources accounting in addition to further strengthening theoretical research, improve the theoretical system of human resources accounting, should also have the following conditions:

1. Human resources legalization. The human resources owned by the enterprise, to be confirmed by laws and regulations, the exchange of which should also have certain legal norms to ensure that the enterprise's ownership of the labor force of the employed workers; the breach of contract in the middle of the workers should be punished accordingly, in order to ensure the relative stability of the enterprise's human resources.

2. Vigorously develop and improve the human resources market. Human resources market for the development of human resources accounting, there are two aspects of significance: on the one hand, a perfect human resources market to provide a reasonable market price of talent, thus providing a basis for accounting; on the other hand, the existence of a perfect human resources market, so that the free flow of talent, enterprises are free to obtain the talent they need, only at this point in time, the community may produce a real and realistic need for human resources information. Only at this point, the society can produce the real realistic demand for human resources information, human resources accounting also has its existence of the social basis. At present, China's talent market, labor market, although there has been some development, but still very imperfect, and entrepreneurial market is almost non-existent, as soon as possible to establish and improve the human resources market is a matter of urgency.

3. Carry out pilot work for the large-scale spread of human resources accounting to prepare. Pilot can choose schools, hospitals, accounting firms, law firms, scientific research units, high-tech types of enterprises and other human resources-intensive units, to accumulate experience, not only to promote the forward development of theory, but also for the full implementation of human resources accounting to prepare.

Currently, China's human resources accounting research, theory is not yet perfect, most of the theory comes from the translation of the Western treatise, and the national situation is not close enough, the full implementation of human resources accounting is a long way to go, which will require theoreticians and practitioners *** with the unremitting efforts.