What is Cost Management ?
Cost management is the process of determining and controlling a company's budget. Cost management is a sort of management accounting that assists a business in forecasting forthcoming expenses in order to stay within budget.
Cost Management
is broken down into four steps.
1: Resource planning
2: Cost estimating
3: Cost budgeting
4: Cost control
1: Resource planning
The practice of determining future
resource requirements for an organization or a scope of work is known as
resource planning. This entails assessing and planning how physical, human,
financial, and informational resources will be used to perform work activities
and tasks. The majority of activities entail the use of humans to complete
tasks. Some activities necessitate the use of materials and consumables. Other
duties include producing an asset based primarily on data inputs (e.g.,
engineering or software design). People usually rely on tools such as equipment
to assist them. Automated tools may be able to do tasks with little or no human
intervention in some instances.
2:
Cost estimating
The predicted process of quantifying,
costing, and pricing the resources required by the scope of an investment
option, activity, or project is known as cost estimating. It entails the use of
strategies to transform quantifiable technical and programmatic data about an
asset or project into finance and resource data. Estimating outputs are largely
used as inputs into corporate planning, cost analysis, and decision-making
processes, as well as project cost and schedule control procedures.
3: Cost budgeting
Budgeting is a sub-process of
estimating that involves assigning expected resource costs to cost accounts
against which cost performance will be reviewed and evaluated. This is the
starting point for cost management. The cost accounting procedure must be
supported by the cost accounts used from the chart of accounts. Budgets are
frequently time-phased to meet deadlines or to manage budget and cash flow
constraints.
4: Cost control
The goal of cost control is to measure
deviations from the cost baseline and take effective corrective action to keep
expenses to a minimum. Procedures are used to track spending and performance
against a project's progress. All changes to the cost baseline must be
documented, and the predicted ultimate total costs must be forecasted on a
regular basis. When real cost data becomes available, explaining what is
generating the cost deviation from the baseline is a crucial part of cost
control. Corrective action may be required as a result of this analysis to
avoid cost overruns.
References
WhatIs.com. 2021. What is cost management? A definition from WhatIs.com. [online] Available at: <https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/cost-management> [Accessed 9 December 2021].
steps, C., 2021. Cost Management explained in 4 steps. [online] Costmanagement.eu. Available at: <https://www.costmanagement.eu/blog-article/cost-management-explained-in-4-steps> [Accessed 10 December 2021].
What is the difference between Cost Cutting and Cost Management ?
ReplyDeleteCost Control is a technique which provides the necessary information to the management that actual costs are aligned with the budgeted costs or not. Conversely, Cost Reduction is a technique used to save the unit cost of the product without compromising its quality.
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ReplyDeleteis there any different between cost and expenses
ReplyDeleteUseful facts. thank you for posting valuable information
ReplyDeleteTrue. In a case study by Huang and Zhang (2013), they mentioned that the main purpose of the cost management system is to maximise profits.
ReplyDeleteIn order to maximise profits, the company has to face and succeed competitions and to develop themselves continually.
In a nutshell, the two primary objectives to provide a cost management system are global competition and continuous improvement
Interesting facts
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing
In a business organization, the key objective is profitability. Without managing cost, unable to maximize the profit. Budget is the plan and it shows where we can go, where we are in.
ReplyDeleteCost controlling is most important to organization maximize the organization's profit.Very important post.
ReplyDeleteVery good post about cost management. Thank for you sharing valuable information.
ReplyDeleteCost management plays vital role in modern era
ReplyDeleteNice explanations..
ReplyDelete