COST ACCOUNTING INFORMATION AND PRICE DETERMINATION (A CASE STUDY OF NIGERIAN BREWERIES PLC ENUGU)

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCION

Cost accounting is being experienced in every organization and it’s information makes for the success of the organization. Therefore, accounting information has a special purpose which is “decision making”. This task of the accountant is to transform raw data into information.

Cost and management accounting are the parts of accounting discipline which have developed to meet up with the progress in technological advancement have broadened the boundaries of accounting profession and made it more useful to modern business enterprise.

Cost accounting is probably the field of accounting which has developed most greatly within the last half of this contriving (success) and there is no doubt about it’s growing importance. This is partly because of the growing complexity of modern production methods, which results in greater capital investment and higher proportion indirect costs, and partly a reflection for growing competition and widening markets in the business world.

All there factors necessitate the keeping of systematic and accurate records which will show the cost of goods produced. The job of accounting has shifted emphasis and the focus from recording, interpreting, and analyzing historical financial transaction, to a more challenging task of setting controls, devising the most efficient method of collecting, interpreting, analyzing and transformation of cost into useful information which is used by management in decision making which affects the future.

A cost management accountant is now deeply involved in helping management to set up control systems that make for co-ordination of all the activities of an organization thereby ensuring proper and purposeful direction and effective control.

The cost accountant withdraw an information provided by the financial accounting system but he will also need to obtain much more details of the internal workings of the business. He will use data in monetary and non monetary form of capacity of material used, products manufactured, machine ruining hour, ideal time etc, he is concerned with finding the actual cost. The emphasis on decision making in recent years had bought together different disciplines which once where viewed as separate areas of knowledge. The accountant has to be knowledgeable over a bread area if he is to be sufficient in providing information, which is relevant and useful for decision making. The great task of an accountant is to transfer raw data into information as an information specialist, the management accountant must be aware of the nature of information and it’s attributes.