The role of cost accounting in the university performance measurement in Portugal

Cost accounting is aimed at emphasising those elements of costs and profits of original importance to the management board of an organizational unit. Therefore, cost accounting was initially understood as mere collector of costs and profits, using the traditional system of costing everything, a budget with a limited base. Originally, it was designed to calculate real costs with the aim to determine the results. In public organizations, the aim of cost accounting, costs or management, can be summarized as follows: o Obtain information of how costs are found, both the ones corresponding to the internal activities as well as those for external services rendered and the cost realized investments; o Obtain information for cost and control management, with efficiency indicators of how the planned objectives were achieved and the efficient use of available resources. This paper aims at knowing the role of cost accounting in the public sector of higher education, and checks its contribution for the establishment of the management indicators in public institutions of higher education.