Fundamentals of Cost Accounting 3rd Edition by William N. Lanen, Shannon W. Anderson, Michael Maher

Exercise 11

It is your first day at a new job and you talk about the themes of cost system design. One of your new colleagues asks, "If different cost information is used for different purposes, does that mean we do not know what something costs? I thought that was what a cost system reported." How would you respond?

Step 1 of 2

Cost accounting system

It is a system designed to report the cost of products and services. Material, labor and overhead costs are allocated to determine unit costs. Cost accounting system comprises of various types of formats, forms, procedures, reports and records. This can be maintained independently and can be part of formal accounting system also.

Cost accounting systems are used by both manufacturing and service firms to find the unit costing of their products or service. There are two types of cost accounting systems like job order costing system used for personalized products or services and process costing system used for large size of identical products. Some companies may use combination of job order costing and process costing system to fit its particular needs.