English
Cost accounting is part of business accounting. It serves to report, plan and control costs and revenues.
Cost accounting is a sub-area of business accounting. It records all types of costs of a company and determines where and for what they have been incurred. In this way, it provides important information for planning and controlling costs and revenues, as well as for making operational decisions.
The tasks of cost accounting and activity accounting lie in:
The main objective of cost and activity accounting is to compare planned costs (expected costs) and incurred costs (actual costs). Through this comparison, decisions made can be evaluated and justified. In addition, future business-related decisions can be prepared and influenced; cost analysis thus forms a necessary basis for the preparation of the business plan.
Cost accounting is divided into cost element accounting, cost center accounting and unit cost accounting. Each of the types of accounting has its own objectives and tasks. They are described in more detail below.
Cost element accounting is the first level of cost accounting. It answers the question of what costs have been incurred and in what amount.
Costs can be structured in a variety of ways. Most of the time, this is done through factors or production functions.This is not only inefficient, but also harbors some dangers. Missing receipts, accounting errors or missing procedural documentation can result in fines if the tax office investigates.
Direct costs can be assigned directly to a product (cost object), such as direct material costs. They can therefore be transferred directly to Cost Object Controlling.
In contrast, overhead costs cannot be assigned directly to a product, such as rental costs. They must first be settled through cost centers before they can be transferred to Cost Object Controlling.
Cost center accounting is the second step of cost accounting. It has the task of distributing the overhead costs incurred to the corresponding cost centers. A cost center is understood to be an area of the company.
Cost centers can be subdivided in different ways:
Cost Object Controlling is the last step in cost accounting. It combines the direct costs of Cost Element Accounting and the overhead costs of Cost Center Accounting and assigns them to individual cost objects: the products or services.
This makes it possible to determine the unit costs of a cost object and, therefore, whether the production and sale of this product is profitable.
An important function of cost accounting and cost analysis is to provide information for operational decision making, especially in the following areas:
