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This paper proposes a costing framework with the objective of providing reliable, relevant, and timely information about the actual costs and the cost efficiency of planned maintenance jobs. The proposed framework includes direct materials, direct labor, and support services costs. The traceability criterion is used for assigning direct materials and direct labor costs to planned maintenance jobs. However, support services costs are allocated to planned maintenance jobs using the concepts and techniques of activity‐based‐costing (ABC). The proposed framework provides a complete audit trail of planned maintenance costs. It also provides a functionality that could be added to enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

PROGRAMME Evaluation and Review Technique, familiarly known as PERT, is a vital subject which is growing rapidly. Recognition of this drew an interested audience to a symposium at Keele University on July 13, when 14 companies contributed papers on different aspects of critical path‐planning techniques and their experience as users in such disparate fields as shipbuilding, aviation, nuclear and civil engineering, the chemical and electrical industries, and management consultancy.

1.1 What Are Accounts For? Overview The purpose of accounts is to reveal performance in the conduct of a business or other activity concerned with use of economic resources (e.g. a club). It is thus a matter of stewardship. Although, like economics, it is necessary in accounting to use money as a measure of performance, it is concerned with the individual organisation rather than with economic phenomena as a whole.

Defines life cycle costing, which gives rise to Life Cycle Cost (LCC). Defines LCC as “The total cost of the system or product under study over its complete life cycle or the duration of the period of study, whichever is the shorter”. Stresses that LCC can be used at whatever level is chosen (estate or, say, a boiler). Explains the timing and mechanism of measurement. Argues that the application of LCC at an early design stage will greatly enhance system design and operation. Offers other pertinent definitions.

Hydrochem, Inc. produces only one product — condutronic plates. The company uses an actual process costing system but is considering changing to a standard costing system. Manufacturing costs consist of raw material, direct labor and manufacturing overhead and the company uses full absorption costing. Students are provided with account balance information at the beginning of the month and with information regarding the company's events and transactions during the month. Students are asked to prepare two income statements for the month and balance sheets as of the end of the month. One set of financial statements is to be prepared using the company's actual costing system, and the other set of financial statements is to be prepared using the proposed standard costing system. Students are asked to explain the differences between these two sets of financial statements and to take a position as to which set of financial information they prefer.

There is need for a new, more precise, more integrated system for logistics costing. The integration of purchasing, transportation (traffic) and storage operations throughout the vertical stream, from source of materials to the consumer is discouragingly complex. It cannot be accomplished by departmentalising logistics functions, performing average and joint commodity costing, and dealing primarily with direct costs. The volume of records may be representative, but there is a very apparent lack of costing systems to facilitate logistics planning. The volume of shipment is the key to logistics cost analysis, just as volume of production is the independent variable in conventional economic analysis. Logistics costs vary with changes in the volume of shipment. Cost per hundredweight is the unit for cost analysis under the Cellular Flow Planning System. It is measured on a specific commodity, between specific points. Purchase price, transport rate, linear increasing costs, constant and single payment decreasing costs are the five classes of costs used to compare competitive volumes of shipment. All significant logistics costs can be so classified. This article presents only the rationale behind the unit for cost measurement, the classification of costs, and the means of comparison.

WORK Study is today a much over‐worked word. Like others of its kind it deserves more accurate definition than it usually gets.

THE 1965 White Paper on Prices and Incomes made express provision for pay increases beyond the norm ‘where the employees concerned, for example by accepting more exacting work or a major change in working practices, make a direct contribution towards increasing productivity in the particular firm or industry’. That has hardly the precision of a dictionary definition, so a special report has now been issued to give guidance to those who have to judge the circumstances which could justify higher pay for increased productivity. Its definition of a productivity agreement says it is ‘a means of offering rewards to workers for their co‐operation in the more effective use of resources’.

This paper focuses on the determination of the cost completion rate used to calculate the equivalent units of production in a continuous process costing system. The paper aims at two research questions. What procedures do companies utilize in practical terms? How should the completion level percentage be calculated conceptually?

The study is a qualitative exploratory survey. The companies targeted were those noted in “Melhores e Maiores,” a ranking of the best and biggest Brazilian companies. A total of 175 questionnaires were sent to pre‐selected enterprises, each with revenues of more than US$100 million per year, and 50 usable responses were returned.

A literature review of the theoretical procedures used for continuous process costing revealed no indication of an objective method for determining the completion level. The empirical research in the present study confirmed that, in practice, companies do not adopt the general procedures proposed by the theory. The best practices applied by the companies have been shown to be an adequate alternative, because the results are identical to those obtained with the proposed method.

The study bears the usual limitations of a qualitative exploratory survey regarding its generalization to other companies.

The originality of the study is based on the assumption that cost accounting theory does not offer an objective solution for the computation of the completion level percentage and, consequently, that companies in continuous process production system do not adopt the theoretical concepts with respect to inventory evaluation of goods‐in‐process and finished goods.