IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/now/fntacc/1400000058.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Costing Systems

Author

Listed:
  • Labro, Eva

Abstract

This monograph provides a structured overview of costing system research that can explain the variation in the characteristics and properties of costing systems found in practice based on firms’ source(s) of their demand for cost information. Costing systems are not developed in a vacuum but are designed to fulfill a purpose. In order to have a meaningful decision on the various demands for cost information, I start in Part 1 by exploring the different techniques firms can use to supply cost information to its managers and employees. Next, I discuss how even the most advanced costing systems will contain error, and present research on how the production environment affects this costing error and what firms can do to reduce the error, outlining important avenues for future research. Part 2 then moves onto the sources of the demands for cost information. I first discuss the decision-making objective of costing systems, and the requirements it places on the preferred measurement object, which resources to include in the cost measurement, and the desired properties of the costing system. The most voluminous literature here is on the capacity acquisition and allocation decision problem, but I cover the demands on costing systems to support customer portfolio decisions, inventory management decisions and decisions on managing competition as well. This part also explores the demands for costing systems for the identification of cost management opportunities and inventory valuation to support financial and tax accounting in a chapter each. Part 2 concludes with a chapter on cost information supporting performance measurement and control, again with respect to the preferred measurement object, which resources to include and the costing system’s preferred properties. Part 3 develops on the conflicting demands placed on costing systems by firms’ attempts at designing costing systems that serve multiple purposes. Furthermore, this part also discusses the nature of the strategic interactions between those different demands.

Suggested Citation

  • Labro, Eva, 2019. "Costing Systems," Foundations and Trends(R) in Accounting, now publishers, vol. 13(3-4), pages 267-404, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:now:fntacc:1400000058
    DOI: 10.1561/1400000058
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/1400000058
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1561/1400000058?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    costing systems; cost systems; managerial accounting system; cost system design; cost information;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M41 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - Accounting

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:now:fntacc:1400000058. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lucy Wiseman (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nowpublishers.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.