Cost accounting in Finland: current practice and trends of development

Abstract

Recent changes in marketing strategies, competition and production environments, and consequent changes in cost structures, have been argued as imposing pressure for change on current cost accounting. Characteristic of the present situation is the serious lack of information concerning the current state of cost accounting practice. The purpose of this study is to describe and analyse the present state, and trends in the development, of cost accounting practices in large and middle-sized Finnish manufacturing units, using a questionnaire survey method. The usable response rate was 44 per cent (135 units). According to the respondents, significant changes have emerged in several areas of their operating environments and strategies during the last few years. Even though these changes have affected a number of cost accounting issues, their most significant effect has been the decrease in the proportion of direct labour costs in unit cost structures. The most important problem areas of cost accounting relate to the allocation of various overhead costs to products. The application of the so-called new cost accounting methods seems to be very infrequent: none of the responding units reported their true application. However, there were indications of current implementation of activity-based costing systems, as well as wide interest in developing them.