Traceability The relationship of costs to cost objects should be exploited to increase the accuracy of cost assignments. Costs are directly or indirectly associated with cost objects. Indirect costs are costs that cannot be easily and accurately traced to a cost object. Direct costs are those costs that can be easily and accurately traced to a cost object 3 “Easily traced” means thai the costs can be assigned in an economically feasible way, while “accurately traced” means that the costs are assigned using a cause-and-effect relationship. Thus, Traceability is simply the ability to assign a cost to a cost object in an economically feasible way by means of a cause-and-effect relationship. The more costs that can be traced to the object, the greater the accuracy of the cost assignments, Establishing traceability is fundamental in building accurate cost assignments.