 it's paid for and deemed to be placed into service, the amount makes its way into the equipment section of the assets category, where it's classified by depreciation rules, in turn driving the depreciation account in the (monthly) expense category. After the monthly closing, various summaries and reports are gener- ated by the accounting system. These reports are used by manage- ment to make decisions about buying, selling, hiring, firing, long- range planning, and strategic acquisition or divestiture. Each depart- ment manager receives a departmental expense summary covering each department for which he or she is responsible for managing. More specifically, and to the point of financial management, most organizations institute something called signing authority. Signing authority is conveyed by management appointment and approval. Senior executives and officers are nominated and approved by the board of directors. Generally, these appointments and authorizations limit the amounts and specific cost centers to a specific list of indi- viduals responsible for approving charges to a specific cost center or small group of cost centers. The individual and their immediate management chain are the only ones who can request and approve expenditure of money charged to the budgets for which they have signing authority. The only possible exceptions are the chief financial officer and chief executive officer, who can generally sign or commit money to be spent for any and all parts of the organization. Practices will vary by organization; however, it is almost impossible to manage communications without two key summaries. One is the communications cost management department summary of all ex- penses and assets specific to the communications cost management PRACTICAL IP AND TELECOM FOR BROADCAST ENGINEERING AND OPERATIONS function, and the other is a summary of just the communications expenses and assets of all departments or cost centers by location in the system. Bear in mind that the accounting system will produce a report