Cost Accounting

Cost Accounting is one type of accounting which mainly deals with the accumulation and allocation of historical costs to units of product and various departments, primarily for valuation of stocks and measurement of profits and losses.
It also seeks to ascertain the cost of a sales/service provided by the business unit with a view to exercising control over these costs to assess the profitability and efficiency of the enterprise.

Cost accounting generally correlated to the future and includes an estimation of future costs to be incurred. The cost accounting process is based on the data provided by the financial accounting. We can also say cost accounting is next step to financial accounting.