Can you point your company in the direction of financial success, step on the gas, and then sit back and wait to arrive at your destination?
Not quite. Any business owner knows you need to make numerous adjustments along the way — decisions about pricing, hiring, investments, and so on.
So, how do you handle the array of questions facing you? One way is through cost accounting.
Cost Accounting Helps You Make Informed Decisions
Cost accounting reports and determines the various costs associated with running your business. With cost accounting, you track the cost of all your business functions — raw materials, labor, inventory and overhead, among others.
Cost accounting differs from financial accounting because it’s only used internally, for decision making. Because financial accounting is employed to produce financial statements for external stakeholders such as stockholders, it must comply with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). Cost accounting does not.
Cost accounting allows you to understand the following:
1. Cost behavior. For example, will the costs increase or stay the same if the types of services you offer change or expand?
2. Appropriate prices for your goods or services. Once you understand cost behavior, you can tweak your pricing based on the current market.
3. Budgeting. You can’t create an effective budget if you don’t know the real costs of the line items.
Is It Hard?
To monitor your company’s costs with this method, you need to pay attention to the two types of costs in any business: fixed and variable.
Fixed costs don’t fluctuate with changes in service or sales. They include:
• Rent
• Insurance
• Dues and subscriptions
• Equipment leases
• Payments on loans
• Management salaries
• Advertising
Variable costs do change with variations in service and sales. Variable costs include:
• Parts and shop supplies
• Hourly wages and commissions
• Utilities
• Inventory
• Office supplies
• Packaging, mailing and shipping costs
Tip: Cost accounting is easier for smaller, less complicated businesses. The more complex your business model, the harder it becomes to assign proper values to all the facets of your company’s functioning.
