Abstract Accounting management is of strategic importance for a successful uptake of computational Grid technology within the user community. Computational Grid is one the most important paradigms for distributed computing and high-performance e-service provision. In this paper we present an architecture for accounting management of e-services on computational Grids which fully meets both the reliability and security requirements for accounting management architectures defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The presented solution, based on previous work successfully deployed in many italian public administrations, nicely fits with the overall Grid architectures and features a clear separation between management of the service and its control.