Gyan Chandra and Jacob B. Paperman DIRECT COSTING VS. ABSORPTION
COSTING: A HISTORICAL REVIEW The purpose of accounting has been
generally described as the process of providing information to
owners, creditors, governmental regulatory agencies, and
operating management. "In a broad sense accounting has one
primary function: facilitating the administration of economic
resources. This function has two closely related phases: (1)
measuring and arraying economic data; (2) communicating the
results of this process to interested parties."1 Of primary
concern is the fact that the users of the accounting information
are involved in the decision making process. However, they have
different in-terests and objectives. Accordingly, the same
information may re-quire varied processing and summarization to
meet the needs of each class of users. Various accounting
practices, based on the same accounting concepts and principles,
have been developed to satisfy the multiple and changing needs
of the users of accounting reports.