proALPHA - Management Accounting

Download Brochure

Management accountants will appreciate the functionality of the cost centre, cost object, and income object accounting modules. Many variations of flexible, continuous, or indexed budgeting are available in each of these modules and an unlimited number of objects can be accommodated. Indexed planning uses either standard or actual amounts based on quantity or value data.

Classification of costs as fixed or variable cost elements allows the implementation of an impressive array of accounting functions.

Information is maintained in parallel for the purposes of management accounting or tax accounting.

The level of integration between all modules in proALPHA ensures that all significant volume/quantity and value data within the system are available to the Management Accounting department.

An unlimited number of cost centres, cost objects and income objects can be created, organised and consolidated - multi-client consolidation is also possible.

All analyses can be designed to include a wide choice of levels of detail - whether an operations summary by cost centre, or an individual cost or income object analysis sheet - and, they are simple to create.

Cost Centre Accounting

Besides their use in controlling business costs, cost and overhead rates are easy to work with and can be set to apply plant-wide or for selected cost centres. Both allocated and output base measures can also be defined for use enterprise-wide or for applicable cost centres only.

The goal of all cost centre accounting systems is to ensure that all costs incurred by a business are allocated to its products or services. In-plant services - indirect costs - can be allocated using either the step-down method or the more accurate reciprocal method. Overheads can also be added directly to the cost of a department using the traditional calculation: volume x cost rate.

Cost Object Accounting

A cost object can be an order, a product or product line, a long-term project, or even an operational process. These are used to determine the costs of purchasing or manufacturing specific products for inclusion on the balance sheet. Multiple methods of costing are supported. The full costing method, required for tax purposes, gives the traditional view of product costs. Under variable costing, only the variable manufacturing costs are considered as product costs. Fixed costs are viewed as period costs. In this way, contribution margins are easily determined.

Income Object Accounting

A special feature of cost and income accounting is their use in period accounting (sometimes called operating income accounting). The net income of the company's operations for the period can be focused on various objects (product line, business unit, customer, sector, and region) or on the entire organisation as a whole. Short-term profit accounting and preparation of the format of the contribution income statement are typical of the functionality provided in this module.