Cost accounting is part of the internal accounting system and, in comparison to financial accounting, is subject to hardly any statutory provisions. It is used primarily for internal information provision for the short-term (operational) planning and monitoring of costs and revenues based on planned, target and actual data. Conventional cost accounting systems tend to be based on financial accounting and mainly have their strengths in cost-centre-based overhead cost controlling. In contrast, order-based PSIpentacost accounting is more suitable for providing a satisfactory representation of individual-cost-based cost unit accounting.
On the one hand, cost type accounting is used to reconcile the values posted in cost accounting with the figures from financial accounting. On the other hand, it reports the chronological and factual accruals between the expenditures in financial accounting and the costs in cost accounting. It also documents cost type accounting, price deviations, quantity deviations or changes in warehouse stock.
Cost centre accounting is one of the basic functions of cost and performance accounting. It can be carried out as actual, standard or flexible planned cost accounting. Import functions for planned and actual data allow processing of information from upstream systems, such as payroll systems. The cost centre target/actual comparison forms the basis of ongoing cost control, both for the cost centre manager and for cost management in controlling.
Cost centre accounting performs the following key tasks:
Order and project accounting (unit accounting) is used in the planning and costing of customer and stock orders, internal orders and investment projects.
Cost unit accounting reproduces time accounting and performs profit and loss accounting whilst taking the resulting deviations and inventory changes into consideration. The profit and loss account can be based on the total cost or cost of sales method. Orders and cost units are planned and budgeted in the same way as cost centres. Settlements between orders are also integrated, as are period-specific accounting and analysis of orders on hand.
The operating statement includes all deviations and contribution differences. This enables easy reconciliation with the results of financial accounting. The user can apply definitions to determine the layout and results structure of cost unit accounting, be it in the form of contribution costing, surcharge costing, sales result costing or production result costing. This means that parallel accounting variations are possible.
Cost unit-based unit accounting provides functions for chronological assignment of all amounts that orders charge to cost unit time accounting at particular times or through defined activities and display at cost unit level.