It is an axiom of modern business, and increasingly within organisations that are not ostensibly impelled by the same
commercial ethos, that satisfying the customer is crucial to the long term success of enterprise. Unless the customer is
satisfied with the offerings that are provided for them, there is a strong likelihood that the future of the business will be
jeopardised. As with any such axiom, this is open to challenge on the grounds that the role accorded the customer is a neat,
even patronising notion that senior executives and their staffs are advised to propagate while continuing to exploit their
customer bases with the same, if not greater zeal as in previous decades. While this is a debate that is worth perpetuating,
there is also considerable merit in accepting that many businesses do believe this axiom, as a result of which they will
recognise customers to be critical assets. As a consequence it is incumbent on their accounting staffs to account for customers
with some reliability. Put differently, there is a pressing need to take the customer into account in a compelling way if the
accounting profession is to retain its own credibility within the organisation.
The placing of a financial value on customers has been acknowledged not to be a viable option. Whether customers
are viewed as a further example of an intangible asset, thereby joining a long list of assets that the profession has found
difficult to value, or using the contemporary designation, an example of relational (intellectual) capital, the possibility of
developing convincing financial valuations that can be incorporated into the balance sheet remains limited. Consequently,
the majority of extant exercises seeking to take the customer into account that can be identified during the past two decades
have occurred within managerial rather than financial accounting, as an element of the “new management accounting”