Cost accounts enable you to monitor project expenses, activity costs, and earned value throughout the project life cycle. Costs are attached to activities and resources so you can track the amount of work accomplished against the amount of money spent. You can assign default or created cost accounts to any project.
Cost accounts are established in a hierarchy. For example, if you created a cost account for a project component such as hardware, you would create other cost accounts beneath this component to show its parts such as coding and installation.