When do firms use different types of customer accounting?

Customer accounting focuses on the financial measurement of customers. This article develops a framework to explain a company's choice of customer accounting technique based on its customer resource interfaces. Four different customer relationships each with its own customer accounting techniques have been identified and are reported here. Transactional customer relationships with low technical and organizational interfaces are associated with customer segment profitability analysis. Facilitative customer relationships with low technical and high organizational interfaces are associated with customer profitability analysis. Integrative customer relationships with high technical and organizational interfaces are associated with life time profitability analysis. Connective customer relationships with high technical and low organizational interfaces are associated with customer valuation analysis. Explorative case studies in the telecom company Ericsson and the paper company Holmen informs the framework. The case data support the framework developed. However, the empirical results are not without ambiguity. The case studies give a more complex picture of how customer accounting techniques are related to a firm's inter-organizational interfaces.