ABSTRACT
There was a period in the history of industry when the function of Cost Accounting was summed up in the sentence which we will find in so many of our textbooks of to-day, that 'The fundamental object of cost accounting is to trace every item of expense to a specific order or process'. We distinguish in Cost Finding two main lines of procedure, namely, Order or Terminal Costing and Process Costing. Process costing is applied to continuous manufacture or to cases where a batch loses its identity in the course of production. A Standard Cost is a predetermined cost based upon the presence of a given set of conditions. The reservation is most important, and it is in the consideration of the variable conditions of manufacture that the skill of the trained Cost Accountant, as distinct from the purely commercial accountant, comes most prominently to the fore.
