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Exercises · Q4

Q.Discuss the nature and scope of cost accounting.

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Nature of cost accounting. Cost accounting has the following essential characteristics:

  • It is a branch of accounting dealing specifically with costs, alongside and drawing data from financial accounting.
  • It is both a science and an art — a science because it rests on organised principles and rules for ascertaining cost, and an art because applying those principles to a particular business needs skill and judgement.
  • It is forward-looking as well as historical — it not only records past costs but is used to estimate, plan and control future costs.
  • It is a service function to management, existing to supply information rather than to earn revenue.
  • It involves both recording costs and analysing and interpreting them for control and decision-making.

Scope of cost accounting. The subject is usually taken to cover:

  1. Cost ascertainment — collecting, classifying and analysing expenditure to find the cost of a product, job, process or service.
  2. Cost accounting (record-keeping) — maintaining the ledgers, cost sheets and records in which costs are recorded and reconciled with the financial accounts.
  3. Cost control — using techniques such as budgetary control and standard costing to keep costs within limits.
  4. Cost reduction — the continuous search for real and permanent reductions in unit cost. …

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