A cost ontology for enterprise modelling

There is an urgent need to formalize activity-based costing (ABC) for the purposes of implementation and usage in enterprises so that enterprises have access to the critical element of global success, viz. strategic management accounting. To make this possible, the authors present a core cost ontology and micro-theory of costing for enterprise modelling that spans the knowledge representation of activity, status of activity, time, causality, and resources. This ensures that ABC may be generically deployed in any enterprise to achieve effective activity-based cost management, irrespective of the enterprise belonging to the manufacturing or service sectors