Evaluation of functioning costs of an enterprise

Abstract

Introduction. Costs are a necessary attribute and an unconditional driver of any business entity. Not having made an expense it is impossible for a company to obtain and dispose its revenues. Costs accompany operations of an enterprise throughout its existence, so their proper identification, accounting, grouping, distribution, analysis and subsequent forecasting and planning are necessary processes for effective business activity.

Purpose. The goal of the article is a thorough study of available methodological approaches to comprehensive analysis of company’s functioning costs, and forthcoming elaboration of proposals for solving the identified problems.

Method (methodology). The author uses a number of general scientific research methods, including abstract-theoretical, dialectical methods, induction and deduction, analysis and synthesis, that were exploited to identify and generalize the theoretical and methodological bases for cost analysis and developing a set of key indicators.

Results. The article discloses the tasks, features and aspects of business functioning cost diagnostics of industrial and trading enterprises. The existing methodological approaches to the analysis of cost management efficiency in domestic and foreign sources were analyzed. The author proposes to decompose such a research into five aspects: volume and structure of expenses, unit costs, critical output, resource consumption and cost of capital. A comprehensive set of performance indicators was formed and recommendations for their calculation were suggested. These proposals can be used for a profound cost analysis of industrial, commercial, agricultural business entities, enterprises representing such sectors as «Information and Telecommunications», «Professional, scientific and technical activities» and others.