Cost accounting is a significant tool for corporate management and thus an essential element of a business studies program. This book covers the fundamentals of cost accounting, its various areas, and the methods that can be applied within them. It also addresses systems such as contribution margin accounting, standard cost accounting, and process cost accounting. Another key focus of the book is the approaches to cost management that are closely related to cost accounting and have partly emerged from it, including target costing, life cycle costing, and benchmarking, which are discussed in detail. Each method and system is presented in general terms, illustrated with an example, and evaluated in terms of its applicability and relevance to real-world scenarios. Numerous exercises are included.