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This paper explores the comprehensiveness of management accountants’ planning and the resource consumption associated with it in Chinese small enterprises (SEs).

The methodology involves correlation and regression analyses of online survey responses.

The study findings are as follows: planning comprehensiveness and the resource consumption associated with it vary greatly across Chinese SEs; there is a trade-off between these two aspects of planning; and provision of linkages within and across plan types, employment of valuation analytics and the use of future-oriented techniques and tools, as well as joint venturing with a foreign partner explain roughly three-quarters of the observed differences in planning behavior.

With no readily accessible source to ensure random selection of the units of analysis, this study relies on a convenience sample. Participants’ survey responses may contain a residual element of key informant bias.

This study uses primary data exclusively. It demonstrates a general trade-off between the comprehensiveness of management accountants’ planning and the associated resource consumption in Chinese SEs. Its novelty also derives from an approach that explains intercompany differences in the observed behavior via variables heretofore seldom used in empirical research.

The purpose of this article is to analyze problems involved in using a four‐tiered, indirect sales‐and‐distribution (S&D) model and describe how a manufacturing small and medium‐sized enterprise's (SME's) controller can master them.

The approach taken is an in‐depth case study of an Asian SME selling its homeopathic remedies through European wholesalers and retailers to geographically dispersed consumers.

The case study provides four main conclusions. First, entering into an indirect S&D relationship with wholesalers and retailers is just one more step along the road to outsourcing an enterprise's non‐core functions in a global economy. Second, as long as an SME is on this road, its controller must make the best of the situation and master the resulting complexity in the areas of sales and distribution. Third, above all, integrating business partners' wholesale and retail trade data into the SME's own management information system represents a major technical challenge. Fourth, presenting a clear, complete, and multidimensional overview of sales figures and inventory levels is a task likely to demand more time and attention in the future.

The research methodology employed here is descriptive, not explanatory. Because the study observes just one firm, it may not be representative of the general SME population. Moreover, much of the information collected is retrospective data and recollections of past events, which may be subject to problems inherent with memory or inadequate recordkeeping. Nevertheless, the findings form a foundation for better understanding the use of a four‐tiered, indirect S&D model.

While much of the literature explicitly or implicitly assumes use of direct S&D models, this article specifically addresses problems arising from an SME's employment of an indirect model and its loss of direct contact with consumers.