Accounting


Feature Writer: Tiffany Bradford
Tiffany Bradford - 2006, Photo by Holly Devylder

Welcome to the accounting section of Suite101! Accounting is an integral part of business in today's world. Whether the type of accounting you are interested in is financial or managerial, you can find information about it here.

Our topics cover many different subjects including U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), basic accounting topics, small business accounting and taxes, and accounting designations such as the Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and Certified Management Accountant (CMA) designations.

Check out the listing of all the featured articles, blog posts and contributing articles . Keep an eye out as there will be many new subject areas and articles added weekly.

If there are any subjects you would like to see featured please feel free to email me with suggestions.

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Accounting, Stockxpert
feature articles
Tiffany Bradford

Life-Cycle Costing

In: Accounting (general)

Life-cycle costing offers a different way to look at overall product costs than other types of costing such as job-order, process, and activity-based costing. more...

Activity-Based Costing (ABC)

In: Accounting (general)

Activity-based costing is a type of costing system that can be used to assign costs more accurately to products and departments in today's complex business world. more...

Forecast for a Business in Excel

In: Accounting (general)

Using trend analysis and other Excel functions can make forecasting for a business budget or plan much easier. more...

Process Costing

In: Accounting (general)

Finding the right costing system is very important for a business. Process costing is one type of costing system that is useful for many industries. more...

Job-Order Costing

In: Accounting (general)

Job-order costing is one of many different accounting costing systems. Finding the right system for a business is key to monitoring and controlling costs. more...

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feature blog
Tiffany Bradford

May 8, 2008

A Different Type of Costing

Why life-cycle costing can be beneficial.


When looking at how to determine costing for their business, many people do not look beyond the basic types (i.e. job-order, process, etc.) to other types of costing that may be beneficial to their business such as life-cycle costing. This may be because they do not see the benefit of costing that does not follow GAAP (meaning further down the life of the product, costs will have to be accounted for in a fashion that is acceptable by GAAP), or because this type of costing is not understood.



Life-cycle costing can be very beneficial for a business because it allows a firm to look at the total estimated costs and revenues of a project before the product goes into the production phase. By identifying costs down the chain, a product manager can look at items in the design phase that can be adjusted to minimize costs in the future. It can also help the product manager to determine if a product is really worthwhile before costs are committed.



Although future costs and revenues must be estimated, life-cycle costing can be a huge help to a product manager and development team, as well as a company’s finance team. More information on life-cycle costing can be found in this article on Life-Cycle Costing .

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