The objective of this paper is to analyze the percentage rate of use and knowledge of activity-based costing (ABC) in small and medium-sized Portuguese enterprises and at the same time searching for the existence of any factors that might explain why this method is not is used among most companies. The collected data allow us to conclude that none of these enterprises uses the ABC and that the majority of respondents did not have any knowledge on the subject. Hierarchical level, age and academic qualifications are the reasons why the knowledge of the ABC is associated to the individual characteristics of people responsible for management accounting.

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Activity-based costing,SMEs,Portugal