What is the Usefulness of Cost Accounting? The shortcomings inherent in financial accounting have made the management to realize the importance of cost accounting. Meaning: Usefulness of Cost accounting is the classifying, recording and appropriate allocation of expenditure for the determination of the costs of products or services, and the presentation of suitably arranged data for purposes of control and guidance of management. Whatever may be the type of business, it involves the expenditure on labor, materials and other items required for manufacturing and disposing of the product. Moreover, big business requires delegation of responsibility, the division of labor and specialization.
Know and understand the Usefulness of Cost Accounting to Managers.
Management has to avoid the possibility of waste at each stage. Management has to ensure that no machine remains idle, efficient labor gets due initiative, proper utilization of by-products makes and costs are properly ascertained.
Besides management, creditors and employees also benefit in numerous ways by the installation of a good costing system in an industrial organization. Cost accounting increases the overall productivity of an industrial establishment and, therefore, serves as an important tool in bringing prosperity to the nation.
How to understand the Usefulness of Cost Accounting to Manager?
The various advantages derived by management on account of a good costing system can be put as follows:
Costing helps in inventory control and cost reduction.
Costing furnishes control which management requires in respect of stock of materials, work-in-progress and finished goods. Costs can reduce in the long-run when alternates try. This is particularly important in the present-day context of global competition. Cost accounting has assumed special significance beyond cost control this way.
Costing makes comparison possible.
If the costing records are regularly kept, comparative cost data for different periods and various volumes of production will be available. It will help the management by informing future lines of action.
Provides data for periodical profit and loss accounts.
Adequate costing records supply to the management such data as may be necessary for the preparation of profit and loss account and balance sheet, at such intervals as may desire by the management. It also explains in detail the sources of profit or loss revealed by the financial accounts, thus helps in the presentation of better information before the management.
Costing results in increased efficiency.
Losses due to wastage of materials, the idle time of workers, poor supervision, etc. will disclose if the various operations involved in manufacturing a product study by a cost accountant. The efficiency can measure and costs controlled and through it, various devices can frame to increase efficiency.
Useful in periods of depression and competition.
During trade depression, the business cannot afford to have leakages which pass unchecked. The management should know where economies may seek, waste elimination and efficiency increase. The business has to wage a war for its survival. The management should know the actual cost of their products. Before embarking on any scheme of reducing the prices or giving tenders. The costing system facilitates this.
It helps in pricing decisions.
Though economic law of supply and demand and activities of the competitors, to a great extent. Determine the price of the article, the cost to the producer does play an important part. The producer can take necessary guidance from his costing records.
Helps in estimates.
Adequate costing records provide a reliable basis upon which tenders and estimates may prepare. The chances of losing a contract on account of over-rating or the loss in the execution of a contract due to under-rating can minimize. Thus, “Ascertained costs provide a measure for estimates, a guide to policy, and control over current production”.
It helps in channelizing production on the right lines.
Costing makes possible for the management to distinguish between profitable and non-profitable activities. Profits can maximize by concentrating or profitable operations and eliminating non-profitable ones.
It helps in reducing wastage.
As it is possible to know the cost of the article at every stage. It becomes possible to check various forms of waste, such as time, expense, etc., or in the use of machinery, equipment, and tools.
It helps in increasing productivity.
The productivity of material and labor requires to increase to have growth and more profitability in the organization. Costing renders great assistance in measuring productivity and suggest ways to improve it.
Advantages of Cost Accounting:
For better understand the Usefulness of Cost Accounting to Manager, important advantages of Cost Accounting are as follows:
Profitable and Non-profitable Activities.
It will throw light upon those activities which bring profits and those activities which result in losses. This will be done only if the cost of each product or each job ascertain and compare with the price obtained.
Support and guide in Reducing Prices.
In certain periods it becomes necessary to reduce the price even below the total cost. This will be so when there is a depression or slump. Costs, properly ascertained, will guide management in this direction.
Information for Proper Planning.
For a proper system of Costing, it is necessary to have detailed information about the facilities available about machine and labor capacity. This helps in proper planning of work so that no section overwork and no section remains idle.
Control over all Materials.
Information about the availability of stocks of various materials and stores must be constantly available if there is a good system of Cost Accounting.
This helps in two ways. Firstly, production can be planned according to the availability of materials and fresh stocks can arrange in time when old stocks are exhausted. Secondly, loss due to carelessness or pilferage or any other mischief will know and, therefore, put down.
Decision Regarding Machine or Labor.
Some of the important questions before management can solve only with the help of information about costs.
For example, if there is the problem of replacement of labor by machinery, Cost Accounting will at least guide management in finding out what the cost of production will be if either machinery or labor use.
Expansion in Production.
Sometimes it is necessary to decide whether the production of one product or the other is to increase. This problem can also be solved only if proper information about costs is available.
Reasons for Losses Detected.
Exact causes of the existence of profits or losses will reveal by a system of Cost Accounting. For example, a concern may suffer not because the cost of production is high or prices are low but because the output is much below the capacity of the concern.
It is only Cost Accounting which will reveal this reason for the loss. It also helps in distinguishing between expenditure and loss which is necessary and that which is unnecessary, that is to say, between normal and abnormal losses.
Helps in Making Decisions.
Cost Accounting inculcates the habit of making calculations with pencil and paper before taking a decision. It will certainly check recklessness. Also, some of the silly mistakes that sometimes occur can avoid if there is a good Cost Accounting system.
To give an instance, a well-known firm once quoted for the supply of mosquito nets to the Government at a very low price. It was only after the order was obtained that the firm found that, by mistake. The price of materials was not included in the quotation.
Check on Accuracy of Financial Accounts.
A good system of Cost Accounting affords an independent and most reliable check on the accuracy of financial accounts. This check operates through the reconciliation of profits shown by Cost Accounts and by Financial Accounts. Based on various advantages of Cost Accounting. It can easily say that “a good system of costing serves as a means of control over expenditure and helps to secure economy in manufacture”.
Fixation of Prices.
In many cases, a firm can fix a price for its products based on the cost of production. Such a case, the price cannot be properly fixed if no proper figures of cost are available.
In the case of big contracts, no quotation can make unless the cost of completing that contract can ascertain. If prices fixed without costing information. The price quoted may either be too high. In which case orders cannot obtain, or it may be too low, in which case order will result in a loss.
It is a mistake on the part of any management to believe that a mere increase in sales volume will result in profits; increased sales at prices lower. Then the cost may well lead the concern to the bankrupt court. Only Cost Accounting will reveal what price will be profitable.
Understand the Measurement and Improvement of Efficiency.
The chief advantage to gain is that Cost Accounting will enable a concern too. First of all, measure its efficiency and then to maintain and improve it. This is done by suitable comparisons and analysis of the differences that may observe.
For example, if materials spent upon a pair of shoes in the Year come to $ 100 and for a similar pair of the shoe, the amount is $ 120 in next Year. It is an indication of a decline in inefficiency.
Of course, the increase may only be due to an increase in the price of materials; it may also be due to greater wastage in the use of materials or inefficiency at the time of buying. So, that unnecessarily high prices were paid. Comparisons may also be made with average figures for the whole industry (if such figures are available) and with ideal figures. Which may have been determined before the head.
In any case, it is this sort of comparison which tells management about the going up or coming down of efficiency. The study will certainly indicate the steps to take to remove the causes of inefficiency or to consolidate a factor which leads to greater efficiency.
