The system management facility (SMF) gathers and records information that installations can use to evaluate system usage. Specifically, the SMF Type 26 record records system identifiers that indicate which system in the configuration performed each major function of processing for a job such as input, conversion, execution, post-execution, division into output elements, and purging. Although job accounting information is completely written to type 5 and type 35 records, those records are not created unless the job runs.

JES2 records the entire contents (up to 142 bytes) of the JOB accounting field into the accounting section of the network job header. This header is transmitted to other nodes with jobs and SYSOUT. The accounting information for a job is available to all nodes in the SMF Type 26 record.