ABC System in a Portuguese State Institution of Higher Education: Preliminaries of a Real Case
José Manuel de Matos Carvalho, Fernando Paulo Belfo, Paulo Alexandre Monteiro Gouveia Sanches
Conference Paper in Proceedings of the 23 rd Annual Congress of the European Accounting Association. March 29, 2000
The need for better and more efficient public institutions, namely schools of higher education, implies the use of higher quality information systems. In Portugal also, new methods of management accounting are being used. This paper analyses the value chain of the main activities of the studied higher education institution, through an inquiry sent to all the teachers. It presents an experience, at its early stage, introducing an ABC system in a public teaching institution, based on a questionnaire to the teachers about the time devoted to the various activities of the school. The analysis of that questionnaire created an awareness of the direct costs of the teachers' activities and allowed us to come to interesting conclusions (v.g. learning evaluation costs) for the preliminary phase of the ABC system.