Abstract The article examines the costs of an enterprise as one of the main management objects that provides competitive advantages to business entities to achieve strategic goals, including advantages in managing the enterprise, the impact on the financial result of operation, determining pricing policy, the level of technology and production organization, and is used to assess the efficiency of management by comparing costs and performance. The definition of the concept of "costs" in regulatory sources, economic and accounting literature is summarized. Four stages of the evolution of knowledge about costs are considered, which include accounting and management aspects. Costs are analyzed according to the accounting and economic model of production. Approaches to the classification of costs - the main principle of organizing management accounting, a method of processing and controlling information - are determined. It is summarized that economically justified classification of costs is the basis for accounting and control of the economic activities of any enterprise, where the distribution and simultaneous combination of various costs, homogeneous according to certain characteristics, is carried out. The change in the cost function for the study of their behavior, using the simplified analysis method, is considered on the example of the activities of 10 warehouses of the machine-building industry, where monthly sales and dependence on the warehouse area are estimated. The use of cost function methods allows you to form an idea not only about costs, but also about stocks, the organization of their supply to the enterprise, fixed assets, labor efficiency, the possibility of expanding the sales market. Directions for reflecting costs are proposed for the formation of both the internal capabilities of the enterprise and the external conditions of its functioning.