Proposal of a methodology to determine the costs that compound the working hour of the accountant expert who works with litigations of the Housing Finance System based on the costing system ABC

Abstract

Forensic accounting is an important branch of Accountancy and one of the most promising areas for the accountants. However, there are few methods that help these workers identifying and measuring the resource consumption generated by their job. This paper aims to build a model which allows the accountant experts who work on contracts revision of the Housing Finance System (SFH) to determine the costs of their working hour. The costing model used was the Activity Based Costing (ABC), because it best fitted in the identification of the costs related to the production of the forensic accounting report. In the research it was used the intentional sampling and, through the answers of 10 questionnaires given by the accountant experts who worked in 2009 on lawsuits related to contract revision of the SFH and who have cadastre in the Associations of Assessors from Minas Gerais, Pernambuco and Distrito Federal, it was possible to reach the main purpose. As a result, it was noticed that these professionals spend most of their time doing the job itself, not planning it. Besides, 24% of the supplied resources to make the investigation were not consumed, generating thus, a high idle capacity for the professionals who work on these litigations.