CONCEPT PAPER ON ACTIVITY BASED COSTING
In recent years, companies have reduced their dependency on traditional accounting systems Developing activity-based cost management systems.
Traditional costing systems have a tendency to assign indirect costs based on something easy to identify (such as direct labor hours). This method of assigning costs can be very inaccurate because there is no actual relationship between the cost pool and the cost driver. This can make indirect costs allocation inaccurate. Initially, managers viewed the ABC approach as a more accurate way of calculating product costs. But ABC has emerged as a tremendously useful guide to management action that can translate directly into higher profits. The Activity Based Costing
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In addition, activities include actions that are performed both by people and machine.
However, as the percentages of indirect or overhead costs rose, this technique became increasingly inaccurate, because indirect costs were not caused equally by all products. For example, one product might take more time in one expensive machine than another product—but since the amount of direct labor and materials might be the same, additional cost for use of the machine is not being recognized when the same broad 'on-cost' percentage is added to all products. Consequently, when multiple products share common costs, there is a danger of one product subsidizing another.
ABC is based on George Staubus' Activity Costing and Input-Output Accounting. The concepts of ABC were developed in the manufacturing sector of the United States during the 1970s and 1980s. During this time, the Consortium for Advanced Management-International, now known simply as CAM-I, provided a formative role for studying and formalizing the principles that have become more formally known as Activity-Based
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Once costs of the activities have been identified, the cost of each activity is attributed to each product to the extent that the product uses the activity. In this way ABC often identifies areas of high overhead costs per unit and so directs attention to finding ways to reduce the costs or to charge more for costly products.
Activity-based costing was first clearly defined in 1987 by Robert S. Kaplan and W. Bruns as a chapter in their book Accounting and Management: A Field Study Perspective. They initially focused on manufacturing industry where increasing technology and productivity improvements have reduced the relative proportion of the direct costs of labor and materials, but have increased relative proportion of indirect costs. For example, increased automation has reduced labor, which is a direct cost, but has increased depreciation, which is an indirect cost.
Activity-based costing was later explained in 1999 by Peter F. Drucker in the book Management Challenges of the 21st Century. He states that traditional cost accounting focuses on what it costs to do something, for example, to cut a screw thread; activity-based costing also records the cost of not doing, such as the cost of waiting for a needed part. Activity-based costing records the costs that traditional cost accounting do not
These costs can be both personnel and non-personnel and both direct and
We discussed how Jeremy handles product costs . The inventory method uses a straight cost
Matthew Yarian ACCT 515 Unit 3 9/17/2016 Chapter 4 4-15) Since many of the indirect cost occurred during a year are not known until the end of the year or accounting period companies use predetermined cost driver rates. In establishing predetermined cost driver rates one must choose a cost driver such as labor and/or machine hours for example. Using a predetermined cost driver gives a company a tool to help keep expenses in proportion with sales and production volumes which allows them to make important decisions about products. 4-18)
A spend analysis evaluates spending to keep costs down. The advantages of a spend analysis is that it contains detailed files on what a company buys, how much they spend, and who they buy from. By conducting a spend analysis the controller can consolidate purchases in order to increase buying volume with a smaller number of preferred suppliers. Although this analysis can be used to reduce cost it does have one disadvantage. Spend analysis do not account for nonfinancial questions behind purchasing decisions.
Being reasonable and taking all parts of representative costs into thought is a piece of how to figure the rate of compensations in your business spending plan. A business by and large
Abstract The Wilkerson Company started facing declination in profits due to the price cutting on their pumps. On the contrary, while the price pumps were decreasing to record numbers, the flow controllers, which controlled the rate and direction flow of chemicals, could increase its prices without significant loss or any competitive response. Wilkerson, his controller, and manufacturing manager developed an activity-based cost model (ABC) to better comprehend the various demands that each product line makes on the organization 's indirect and support resources. Exhibit 1 showed us our operating results, Exhibit 2 showed us our product profitability analysis, Exhibit 3 displayed our product data, and Exhibit 4 was a compilation of the monthly
ACC 201 Final Project Part I Accounting Cycle Report Vanessa Ann Williams Southern New Hampshire University The accountant cycle has really impacted me to gain insight on the financial side of Peyton Company. In the accountant cycle, there are many particular directions involve determining the growth of the company such as steps, role, omission and financial statements. It’s important to apply every step from the accountant cycle to make a financial critical decision in the long run. This report will have a breakdown of how to apply the accountant cycle for Peyton Company to be aware of future financial decisions to keep the company holding strong.
Edmonds, T. P., Tsay, B., & Olds, P. R. (2011). Fundamental managerial accounting concepts (6th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill
Abby prefers to allocate indirect cost using activity-based costing for these orders, but recognizes that not all costs are driven by volume of output. Abby prepares a
Direct labor which is a human resource will be recalculated on the basis of sales of 3 million bikes. It may happen to produce 1 million products, they require 50000 employees but to produce 3 million products they require 200000 employees and to be on safer size, 10% extra labor will be recruited which will give a total of 220000 employees. Therefore it is clearly understood that the company can prepare their Labor Requirement budget directly from the sales budget. The same concept will apply to overhead and capital expenditures because overheads are directly proportional to the production and if the sales are high, product will automatically are high. Similarly quantity requirement will lead to the requirement of machines.
Step 5: Allocate overhead costs to products. The activity costs should be absorbed back into the individual products by multiplying the predetermined overhead rate for each activity by the level of cost driver activity used by the product Total activity costs can them be added to labour and material costs as normal.
Also, various methods of controlling costs such as standard costing system and flexible budgets have close relation with the variable costing system, in turn making it easy to use those methods. 3. Companies using variable costing system are able to prepare income statement in contribution margin format that provides necessary information for cost volume profit (CVP) analysis. On the flip side, this data cannot be directly obtained from a traditional income statement prepared under absorption costing
Based on this case the cost driver is to properly distribute the direct cost among the different divisions. Dr. Julian would like to control her departments costs by having them distributed fairly among the divisions without affecting the hospital’s reimbursement/revenue. Carroll University Hospital is currently using the standard costing unit, which is based on the cost of bed/day for inpatients. Currently the present cost accounting system that is being used at CUH takes the total direct cost of the departments, then allocates the indirect costs and distributes it among the departments evenly regardless of the actual resources being used in those departments, and without considering that there may be some patients in these divisions that may require more resources than others, this method does not seem to recognize the different activities,
Table of Contents Abstract: 3 Introduction: 3 Functions of an Accounting Information System: 4 Literature Review: 4 The Role of Financial Statement in Managerial Decision Making: 6 Accounting Information System related to Decision-making process: 7 Accounting Information on Decision-making Process: 7 Conclusion: 9 References: 10 Abstract: This paper discussed the extended normative model and supported through a longitudinal study. It is exploring the roles of Accounting Information Systems in an organization facing financial stages. Many teams suffer the various crises in different types.
In terms of controlling, the management of Marks and Spencer has frequent reporting of expenditures with costs to provide a form of feedback. The reactions of managers to such type of data rely on the expectations or the formal budget or planned targets. The management believes in collecting and assigning cost data that is being shifted away from control. There is a recognition related to the repetitive exercise of planning and re-planning for creating a full time job for accountants. The assessment and evaluation of cost data in the aspects of launching new product by Marks and Spencer is about gaining insights and learning ways for achieving the goals of organisation in most effective manner.