Companies have used the retail method of inventory accounting for many years. According to the Committee on Ways and Means, the retail inventory method has been the best accounting method since 1941.

How a company values its inventory affects its income statement and bottom line. "Average cost" and "last in, first out," or LIFO, are two of the most common methods for valuing inventory. Both rely ...

Few differences between IFRS and U.S. GAAP loom larger than accounting for inventories, particularly the disallowance of the last-in, first-out (LIFO) method in IFRS. The proposed shift of U.S. public ...