Traditional costing and ERP systems calculate only a company's variable or direct costs. However, direct costs account for less than half of total costs. Decisions based only on direct cost inputs are made without seeing the whole picture.

Furthermore, legacy Activity Based Costing and Activity Based Management software programs will lump costs together rather than keeping them separate. This means, for example, that an executive doing a strategic analysis will see that Department A has had rising costs over the past six months, but will not be able to determine whether the costs are due to an aggressive new marketing campaign, poor management, quality issues, or some unknown factor.

GaussSoft Profit and Cost accumulator' functionality gives companies the ability to create a customized cost model with direct and indirect costs, and to keep track of each cost without ever summing them. With GaussSoft Profit and Cost, Department A's costs are very visible. The executive can see all the costs and revenue allocated over time to Department A: raw materials, R&D staff and overhead, marketing campaign expenses, marketing overhead, as well as revenue generated. This more detailed and accurate picture of profits and costs gives management executives the information needed for better decision making.

Think of the three basic elements of GaussSoft Profit and Cost accumulator functionality as building blocks which can be assembled in any way to represent any reality.

In GaussSoft Profit and Cost graphic interface, you can see accumulators and drivers, as follows: