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Strengths and weaknesses of activity based costing
Strengths and weaknesses of activity based costing
Factors that led to the emergence of activity based costing
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Introduction
Activity Based Costing (ABC) refers to an accounting method that enables businesses to gather information about their operating costs and assign them to specific activities such as planning, engineering or manufacturing. Therefore, ABC enables businesses decide which products, services and resources to employ in order to increase profitability and cut down unnecessary wastage. Unlike the traditional costing methods, ABC emerged in the 1980’s as a way to more accurately measure all business costs while at the same time associating them to the goods and services produced.
Application of ABC in Pratt & Whitney
Pratt & Whitney; one of the world leading firms in the designing and production of gas turbine engines (small and medium) for helicopters, military trainers, business crafts and marine applications utilizes the ABC method. According to the then CEO, Claude Levesque; manufacturing costs were killing the company operations. Claude terms the traditional costing methods as systems that allot huge pieces of overhead to the processes of
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For instance, ABC might identify a distribution channel as non-remunerative or non-value adding. Such channeling might however be non-profitable, but aid in achieving some other strategic objectives. Conclusively, the review of activity based costing benefits and shortcomings suggests that although ABC has many uses and has aided in renovating many firms, the establishment of lean accounting methods such as Economic Value Added and Balanced Scorecards that focus on eradicating cost allocations and permit thorough accounting, measurement and control systems, has made activity based costing tend to become obsolete. However, ABC still has many supporters, notably in some business-intelligence software applications and the US Marine
If done right, I believe that all of the costs can be allocated to each of the three products through both direct and overhead costs. The only direct costs that are being included currently are labor and manufacturing costs. I broke up overhead into overhead based off direct labor and overhead based on units sold.
An organization costing system is a system that helps the management with the strategy planning while the system plays an important role in providing accurate cost information about the products and customers (Curtin, 2006). UPS utilizes the Activity-Based Costing (ABC) system. ABC assumes that activities cause costs and that cost objects create the demand for activities (Marx, 2009). The key to cost allocation under ABC is to identify the activities that are performed to provide a particular service and then aggregate the costs of the activities (Gapenski, 2012). This is a marked departure from the practice of sharing overheads costs equally or overheads becoming part of the overall profit-loss estimate instead of component product pricing (Nayab, 2011).
Cost accounting system has two types, job order costing, and process cost system. These two cost systems are very different, almost every company uses order costing or process costing. Starbucks, is a coffee shop where citizens congregate to drink there morning coffee, study, and or socialize. Starbucks is one of the oldest and largest privately held specialty coffee retailer in the United States. (Starbucks) Their passion is to discover the flavors you love and always bring it home, delivering the look, taste and aroma of the world’s best coffee and teas. Job order costing is a very easy way in order to help Starbucks managers to know how much profit their company (Starbucks) made.
The engineering section of aircraft manufacturing is quite old. It is characterized by a few firms that keep Rolls-Royce on its toes in terms of competition, like General Electric. The small number of firms can be justified by the high cost of starting of...
"College Accounting Coach." Process Costing-Definitions And Features(Part1) « Process Costing « Cost Accounting «. Feb. 2007. Web
Besides, an organisation can adopt a technique of activity-based costing (ABC) as an approach to support its sustainability objectives. ABC system is a technique of assigning overhead costs to products and services by identifying the cost drivers. ABC technique will first identify each activity cost that is involved in the process of production, then assign the cost to each product and service on the basis of each activity consumption in the production of each product and service (Drury, 2012, p. 253). ABC system is an effective method to account for costs of products and services. This is because ABC system allocates indirect costs based on a cause-and-effect relationship (Drury, 2012, p. 269). ABC system allocates overhead costs to cost
With the demands of keeping up with competitors and customers these conditions will help them to stay on top of the economy. Even though ABC cost system is a managerial cost tool, e-commerce companies can use EAD (expense activity dependence) and APD (activity product dependence) matrix. These are two tools associated with ABC costing will allow Groupon to use the data provided from the company to trace overhead expenses such as: web design and maintenance, order processing, product marketing, telephone support, product handling and product shipping. The main activities identified to trace Groupon’s overhead will be determined by the level of accuracy and reliability
Activity-based costing is used as a supplement of traditional cost accounting in a company to support manager in internal decision making. It focus on assigning the indirect cost to direct costs in order to get a more accurate cost on products. Activity-based costing uses several cost pools instead of one in traditional cost accounting. The system is easy to implement and it provides many benefits, it allows the company to respond to inefficiency by reallocating resources to more profitable activity from areas that absorb too many resources. It also allows the company to respond to manufacturing overhead cost and assumes a more accurate selling price on products in order to make more profits. Company that do not have internal expertise to conduct activity-based costing analysis may think to hire one or ask company that provides this kind of services for help.
In accounting terms, operating expenses (OE) and cost of goods sold (COGS) are both considered expense accounts. In short, they measure different ways in which resources are spent in the process of running a business. They are segregated on an income statement in part to see how much a product’s resources cost versus how much it costs a business to turn those resources into a consumer good.
1.What is the ABC cross model? Define what is meant by the product costing, process costing, and the “what-if” cost-modeling perspectives of ABC.
"Both methods estimate overhead costs related to production and then assign these costs to products based on a cost-driver rate. The differences are in the accuracy and complexity of the two methods" (1) , Now we will discuss why ABC can result in more reliable products costs than conventional labor based product costing system . In recent years, the nature of industrial production has fundamentally altered; we will discuss their characteristics. First we have machine production and capital intensive, Now machines are the main tool and at the heart of production; labors maintain machines and supervise them, and machines are the ones that dictates the pace and rate of production. The second characteristic is high level of overheads relative to direct cost; in modern businesses they tend to use overheads in different ways for example: some products need engineering time and some products require machine time so that products will use overheads differently. The third characteristic is highly competitive international market, transportation including fast freight and relatively cheap; one of the advantages is the use of internet ensures that customers can easily and quickly reach and find products and also cheaply, this environment is highly competitive so companies need to know accurately their range of prices in order to use this information to gain competitive advantage over other
Activity-Based Costing ( ABC ) Summary The business environment in the 1990s is markedly different from that of the past when conventional cost accounting procedures were established. Activity-based costing (ABC), pioneered in the late 1980s, offered a new costing approach consistent with the changed environment. However, ABC did not diffuse rapidly into the business community.
Life cycle costing is a process of estimating and accumulating costs over a product’s entire life cycle in order to determine whether the profits earned during the manufacturing phase will cover the costs incurred during the pre- and post- manufacturing stages. Identifying the costs incurred during the different stages of a product’s life cycle provides an insight into understanding and managing the total costs incurred throughout its life cycle. In particular, life cycle costing helps the management to understand the cost consequences of developing and making a product and to identify areas in which cost reduction efforts are likely to be most effective.
The overall purpose of cost accounting is to advise top administration and the management team on the most suitable and cost effective methods and actions to employ based on cost, capability and efficiencies of a given product or service. It can be defined as the method where all the expenditures used during execution of business activities are gathered, categorized, examined and noted down (Horngren & Srikant, 2000). Once these numbers are gathered and recorded the information is used to determine a selling price and/or to identify possible investment opportunities. Although the principal aim or function of cost accounting is to help the business administration with their decision making and business planning process, the cost accounting data
A job order cost system is one in which costs are accumulated by individual products. Furthermore, a job-order costing system is utilized for assigning manufacturing costs to an individual product or batches of products. Generally, the job order costing system is used only when the products manufactured are adequately different from each other. In contrast, when products are identical or nearly identical, the process-costing system will likely be used (Averkamp, 2016). In addition, a job-order costing system is generally used by companies that manufacture a number of contrasting products.