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The agricultural structures are under strong pressure motivated by the necessity to cut expenses and by the scarcity of time and human resources on one side and on the other side -- by the continuously rising requirements to the quality of the offered products and services. The outsourcing enables the organizations to reduce their operating costs, to concentrate on their key business, to improve the quality of the products and services they offer, to gain access to the best of technologies, to attract first class experts, to share the risks with their partners. The outsourcing in regards to the machine-and-tractors fleet in the agricultural sector can be put into practice in various directions -- planning, development of investments projects, operations management and maintenance, etc. The outsourcing differs from consultancy and from the traditional external services contracts. The consultancy just gives recommendations how to achieve the desired results, while in the outsourcing the appropriate group of experts put their own recommendations in practice. In the first case the earnings are made on advice giving, and in the second case remuneration is paid for results, and on top of that responsibilities are assumed for the spending of the funds of the contracting organisation. The traditional contracts for external machinery services usually imply ordering a job which the contracting organisation for some reason is not able to perform alone in that particular moment, but they do not intend to contract external suppliers for that as a whole for a long-term period. An example for such a contract is the contract with an external contractor for a harvesting job which, due to insufficient capacities (insufficient number of harvesters), the contracting organisation can not complete on their own within the favourable agro-technical time. However, if the enterprise decides not deal at all with this type of mechanical services and they sign with another organization a long-term agreement for external services, which is bound by the so called "key factors", then we can regard this as a case of outsourcing. Such factors could be for example: time of response and completion, costs reduction initiatives, etc. The main feature that distinguishes the outsourcing contract from the usual external service contract is the commitment to results. The economic essence of the outsourcing model involves not only performance of the contracted jobs on the bases of an agreement; it also involves delegating of powers, responsibilities and risks related to the subject matter of the contract. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The agricultural enterprise should develop and implement its depreciation policy for depreciable assets, including the ones that form the machine- tractor fleet. The depreciation policy is an integral part of the accounting policy. It is a system of input assumptions, specific methods, rules and practices adopted by the enterprise and applied in its business while systematically distributing the depreciable sum of the depreciable assets during the lifetime of those, which are aimed and utilized for the purpose of making the widest and efficient use of those assets. A successful depreciation policy is an important factor for the sustainable functioning of an enterprise. The depreciation method as an element of that policy should be very carefully chosen, the consequences of that choice should be analyzed, such as the depreciation expenses. The depreciation policy incorporates also adopting approaches to: classification of the assets into long-term assets and non-material (intangible) assets, into depreciable and non-depreciable, determining the lifetime of the assets, determining the residual value, etc. The depreciation expenses of the enterprises which have purchased new farming machinery hold a considerable relative share in the total costs amount. The organisations may manage those costs depending on their goals. Tax depreciation policy equips the government with a tool for promoting farmer's structures' machines-and-tractors fleet renewal, considering the fact that as a whole the fleet of the Bulgarian farmers is morally and physically out-of-date. That can be achieved through recognizing all the depreciation methods as applicable for tax purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main task of the modern management of enterprises is to ensure management of expenses. The total amount of those depends to a great extent on the capacities of the managers to optimize the values of expenses while preserving the quality of the marketed product. Inline with this, we may argue in favour of recognising the expenses for services offered by the machines-and-tractors fleet as subject to management. The aim of an accounting system ensuring management of the expenses for the machines-and-tractors fleet is not just to identify and trace in time the work processes related to the forming of the operative costs, it also aspires at producing some indicators which could serve as an instrument of sustainable utilization of resources, control and decisions-making with a view to the maximizing the efficiency of each individual enterprise and of the entire agriculture sector as a whole. To achieve this the following directions should be followed: development of an accounts chart containing the necessary indicators to allow generating of reports to the management; regulate the documents turnover in accordance with the information required and reported in the synthetic and in the analytic accounts according to their economic contents; selection of an appropriate model of accounting for the expenses and calculating of the costs; development of a procedure for converting the accounting data into information for the management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essential characteristic of assets constituting the machine- tractor fleet in agricultural enterprises is that during operation, they lose some of their consumer properties, leading to degradation in their performance. The usage of the equipment under such conditions is not appropriate and they need to be refurbished fully or at least to a certain extent. This is done by carrying out repair costs. The share of these costs in the cost of agricultural products is significant. The role of the accounting in planning, control and analysis of the cost of repairs is extremely high. In the accounting policy of the entities should be set precise criteria for the origin of these costs, their classification, grouping and their treatment in accordance with accounting standards [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]