Detailed Cost Record

a system of bookkeeping entries providing detailed information on the movement of business funds. It is designed for day-by-day management of a firm and for compiling reports and is organized for each financial account individually. The entries of the detailed cost record which are most amalgamated and most common to all enterprises are provided in the account plan and are called subaccounts. In contrast to financial accounting, the cost accounting record is kept not only in cost indexes but also in physical units; the accounts also contain informative data. From the financial accounts with the most analytical system of entries to the detailed cost record, the individual financial and cost ledgers (such as files and journals) are employed. These ledgers show individual accounting of fixed assets according to their type and location; quantitative and graded warehouse accounting of materials and finished products; personal accounts for wage payments to employees; and expenditure accounting broken down for the detailed cost items in the accounts of direct production costs in terms of the types of product, manufacturing stages, costing items, and so on. The cost accounting entries for such accounts are checked against the entries of financial accounting using the balance journals or summaries of balance: the sums of the cost accounting entries should be identical to the results of the entries in the corresponding financial account.

Concerning the less amalgamated branches of cost items—that is, for finance, coordination, and administration, and a majority of the payment accounts—the entries of the detailed cost record are combined in the general ledgers with the entries of financial accounting (cumulative journals, summaries, tabulated forms, and the like). In these ledgers, the entries of the detailed cost record replace the entries of financial accounting or serve as the basis for them. The reliability of the indexes of the detailed cost record are periodically verified by taking inventory.