Cost Accounting in Rail Transport: Industry Peculiarities and Analytical Improvement

The article examines the current state and specific features of cost accounting in rail transport, taking into account the complexity of the transportation process, the multilevel structure of economic activities, and the specific characteristics of transport service cost formation. The need to improve the cost accounting system through the integration of general accounting principles, industryspecific cost classification, and the organizational characteristics of rail transport operations is substantiated. It is established that the effectiveness of accounting support depends not only on the completeness of cost recognition but also on the ability to identify costs by places of occurrence, types of activity, operational units, responsibility centres, and costing objects. The study examines the specific features of production cost formation, accounting for direct and indirect costs, allocation of overhead costs, and the generation of information on internal turnover. It is determined that the application of uniform approaches to the allocation of heterogeneous indirect costs does not always ensure an adequate correspondence between actual resource consumption and the resulting cost. Therefore, the expediency of differentiating allocation bases according to the economic substance and causal factors underlying the respective costs is substantiated. An authordeveloped model of analytical support for cost accounting is proposed, providing for the sequential generation of information based on interrelated characteristics. It is substantiated that the implementation of the proposed approach will contribute to greater transparency in cost formation, enhanced control over resource utilization, and improved information support for managerial decision-making. The proposed differentiation of allocation bases for overhead costs and the multilevel analytical model can be applied in the practical activities of railway transport enterprises to improve the accuracy of costing and the validity of management decisions. Further research should focus on developing a methodology for evaluating the effectiveness of differentiated allocation bases and forming a system of cost control indicators by responsibility centres.