engleski

Function of Costs for Service Price Determination in Croatian Public Sector

Efficient managing with governmental units demands from public management appliance of wide range on cost and managerial accounting techniques and methods and it’ s usage in wider aspect of informational technology and financial managing. Often reasons for insufficient usage of cost and managerial accounting are some facts as follows: - some services provided from state are for free, some are partially charged and some completely ; - cost incurred in the process of providing services couldn’ t be reliably computed because inputs in those processes aren’ t completely paid e.g. the usage of natural resources or all costs aren’ t tracked e.g. depreciation ; - criteria for evaluation or assessment of some activities and projects, even with tracked costs , aren’ t familiar ; - programmes, services, projects and activities are often issue of political and social decisions and because of that goals of such decisions are usually more important then tracking of incurred costs ; - state budget is instutionalized and defined in accordance with cash accounting basis, so control of budgetary sources and public money are usually primarily or the only interest of the legislator. Regardless, more and more restrictions for available resources and increasing debts from one side, bigger public needs and public criticism from the other side, are forcing public management on decreasing costs and increasing quality of provided services. It isn’ t possible to satisfy those demands without appliance of proper cost and managerial accounting. Methods, techniques, instruments, cost concepts and performance processes of cost accounting that are scientifically and practically developed and deeply rooted in managing process in profit sector, could be applied also in managing processes in public sector. Present experiences in Republic of Croatia but also in most other countries are showing that the range of appliance cost and managerial accounting in public sector is very small. Research field for this paper are Faculties and their implementation of cost and managerial accounting into the accounting system. Since, the price determination of studies and financing high education in generally is a very significant and “ hot topic” in Croatia these days, it is very important to show with this paper that Faculties don’ t have relevant information’ s about occurred costs and internal settlement on which basis they could determined scholarships. With that on mind, the leading hypothesis was set up, that transparent price determination of provided services at Faculties doesn’ t depend on different methods of cost allocation. For quality decisions making about prices at Faculties it is necessary to have relevant information’ s about costs. Using different modern methods for managing costs, information about costs are significantly different. Based on that, the process of decision making in public sector and decision made on costs could vary. So, it is very important to implement the right cost allocation method. But it is also important to combine market and cost approach in determining prices of provided services at Faculties regardless on time period of provided services.

cost; public sector; price determination

nije evidentirano