When planning construction production, special attention is paid to costs and calculating the planned cost. The planned cost of construction work is formed on the basis of cost indicators.
The organization establishes expense items and methods for calculating cost independently in the accounting policy and other internal acts.
It is advisable to keep track of costs in construction companies by economic elements (that is, by the composition of costs, their economic content – what and in what volume was spent on construction) and costing items – expense items (accounting for costs by intended purpose – where and for what these costs were incurred).
Accounting for costs by economic elements for all organizations includes:
- material costs (minus the cost of returnable waste);
- labor costs;
- deductions for social needs;
- depreciation of fixed assets;
- other costs.
Such grouping characterizes the structure of production costs and is used in general economic calculations. Information on costs for each economic element is grouped in the corresponding accounting accounts.
When accounting for costs by costing items, the following cost items are used:
- materials;
- labor costs;
- costs for the maintenance and operation of construction machinery and mechanisms;
- other expenses.
In addition, costs can be accounted for at the place of their occurrence – construction sites, objects, subsidiary production facilities and other structural divisions of the enterprise. Such grouping is necessary for organizing internal accounting and determining the cost of construction and installation work for each construction project.
By the method of inclusion in the cost of individual types of construction work, costs are divided into:
- direct – costs associated with the production of construction work, which can be directly and immediately included in the cost of work for the relevant accounting objects;
- indirect (overhead) – are not directly related to a specific costing object, therefore, they are subject to inclusion in its cost by an indirect calculation method.
By the feature of participation in the production process, costs are divided into main and other.
Main are understood to be technologically unavoidable costs due to the construction process. These include: costs of raw materials and supplies, process fuel, wages of construction workers, etc. Other expenses are costs associated with servicing the production and management process.
According to the degree of dependence on the volume of production (work performed), variable and conditionally fixed costs are distinguished.