Costing is a very important concept in modern accounting. While its application touches every aspect of any business, its definition, however, varies amongst the users and is difficult to come to an appropriate conclusion. The concept of costing occupies the core in notably the cost accounting researches. Nevertheless, the content of costing and its applications show a trend of broadening due to the ever changing accounting environment and the appearance of new theories and methodologies.
According to the principle of "Different objective, different costing" (J. M. Clark, 1923), various costing concepts and their evolvement in different periods of time are introduced here. Based on the different business objectives, costing can be grouped into costing for auditing, controlling and decision making. We are going to study/explore the applications of these three kinds of costing concept.