Project accounting

Project accounting is a type of managerial accounting oriented toward the goals of project management and delivery. It involves tracking, reporting, and analyzing financial results and implications, and sometimes the creation of financial reports designed to track the financial progress of projects; the information generated by this analysis is used to aid project management.

Project accounting is traditionally used for large construction, engineering, and government projects. It is commonly used by government contractors, where the ability to account for costs by contract, and sometimes by individual contract line item [CLIN], is often a requirement for interim payments. A specialized form of project accounting, production accounting, is used by production studios to track an individual movie or television episode's costs.

The capital budget processes of large corporations and governmental entities are chiefly concerned with major investment projects, which typically have significant upfront costs and benefits realized over the long term. Investment "go/no-go" decisions are largely based on net present value assessments; project accounting and cost/benefit analyses provide vital feedback on the quality of those decisions.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.