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Logistics is critical to the fulfillment of customer demands. Top management of companies is now more closely involved in logistics decisions and the importance of the consequences of these decisions is growing. It is crucial to support these decisions with relevant financial information. Companies often lack useful tools to generate this financial information. This paper presents a logistics management accounting framework to support logistics management decisions. In this distribution cost model the benefits of Activity Based Costing with regard to the allocation of costs and the control of processes are combined with the benefits of cash flow based accounting with regard to decision support.

In most developed economies the costs of logistics management are steadily growing and account for an increasing proportion of the gross national product. Logistics costs have become an important part of the added value of products and logistics management is increasingly regarded as an important weapon in the international competitive struggle, in particular by large market‐oriented companies. The emphasis in marketing strategies is shifting from product and price to promotion and place. Rapidly changing customer demands have an increasing effect on company policies. Reduction of product life cycles and assortment expansion will lead to faster development and delivery of new products and to smaller‐sized and more frequently placed delivery orders. Advancing technology will cause production to require more focus. Customers are becoming more demanding and manufacturers have to react faster to changing demand on the part of both private consumers and industrial customers. This requires enormous flexibility, which will be increasingly aimed at conquering and securing sales potential in the liberalized European market. Successful companies will focus on core activities. Activities other than core activities, but serving them, will have to be outsourced.