The invention relates to a method and a system for collecting counter data from a set of counters in a network element. According to the present invention, the updating block updates an accounting file, and the changed counter data is collected from said accounting file by a centralized counter handling block for writing into a transfer file. The collecting of said counter data is controlled using collecting information from a control file, wherein the specific counters are to be taken into account by changing said information in said control file. Information in said control file also specifies the user interface by specifying the format of the counter data which is to be written to the transfer file.