WordNet
n. keeping account of the costs of items in production
Wikipedia
Cost accounting is a process of collecting, recording, classifying, analyzing, summarizing, allocating and evaluating various alternative courses of action & control of costs. Its goal is to advise the management on the most appropriate course of action based on the cost efficiency and capability. Cost accounting provides the detailed cost information that management needs to control current operations and plan for the future.
Since managers are making decisions only for their own organization, there is no need for the information to be comparable to similar information from other organizations. Instead, information must be relevant for a particular environment. Cost accounting information is commonly used in financial accounting information, but its primary function is for use by managers to facilitate making decisions.
Unlike the accounting systems that help in the preparation of financial reports periodically, the cost accounting systems and reports are not subject to rules and standards like the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles(GAAP). As a result, there is wide variety in the cost accounting systems of the different companies and sometimes even in different parts of the same company or organization.
Usage examples of "cost accounting".
He thought with distaste of the great, factory like plantations a few hundred miles further from the pole, where the temperature was always twenty to thirty degrees higher than it was in his marshes and mortality among labor clients was a standard item in cost accounting.
A complete socialism would have as much need for structural appropriateness in its cost accounting as do free entrepreneurs.
More serious, according to Lane, was the burning of the onsite office, which contained time sheets, work records, and ninety percent of the company's cost accounting records over the last three months.
More serious, according to Lane, was the burning of the on-site office, which contained time sheets, work records, and ninety percent of the company's cost accounting records over the last three months.
Just yesterday we were trying to do a cost accounting for hit men for the CIA and all we could get on the printouts was the cost of Cape Canaveral.