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Johnson and Kaplan (1987) have led to the emergence of Activity Based Costing (ABC) systems
Johnson and Kaplan (1987) have led to the emergence of Activity Based Costing (ABC) systems
Why is accurate data important
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Recommended: Johnson and Kaplan (1987) have led to the emergence of Activity Based Costing (ABC) systems
Report – Management accounting 2
Introduction
This report will cover an in depth analysis of the Standard Costing system (Absorption Costing), Activity Based Costing (ABC) and it will also cover Activity Based Management (ABM). This report will help to clarify any unreliable sources which have indicated that Absorption Costing is the way forward. This report will investigate the shortcomings of absorption costing, it will also cover other areas such as the benefits and shortcomings of Activity Based Costing (ABC) and it will also touch the advantages and disadvantages of using Activity Based Management (ABM). By the end of this report the management team of the computer company will be comfortable and will have the knowledge to use other
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This effectively leads to managers and investors thinking that the company has more money than it is said to Wihave. Which in turn means they could over spend on raw materials and other essentials to start the next production, and by spending this money it will create debt which the company will have to pay back, which could lead to loans etc. for the company, which again starts a cycle that could be avoidable with other systems. Absorption Costing also falls short to provide …show more content…
Resources are assigned to activities, and activities to cost objects based on consumption estimates. The latter utilise cost drivers to attach activity costs to outputs.” Compared to the traditional costing system, Activity Based Cost (ABC) is a lot more sophisticated and it is the most commonly used system within business although it is a lot more time consuming. For example, if a company has two products that they were selling and one was more demanding in ways that it needed a specific kind of engineering and it needed a unique way of testing. Then the other product was just manufactured through a machine the overhead activity would appear much great when the traditional system is used – absorption costing. Whereas with ABC each individual step of the process is priced which allows the company to see how much is owed in all aspects of manufacturing and selling. The use of ABC has increased rapidly over the past decades due to the fact that there is a more advanced technology in the world today and for competitors to compete they have to have top of the line products, and this is why activity based costing is being used as it ensures all aspects of costs are being considered within the price. With ABC it allows the accountant within the business to produce a more accurate representation of the product and by
What are the symptoms of cost system failure? The system assigns overheads only based on “normal volume, which usually are labor and materials. This lead to distortions cost in the calculation of products cost, and many indirect and support cost, which are not used by products in normal volumes base, are included. Therefore, the system provided inaccurate information, as Sinclair recalled: “we didn’t even know our costs.”
Activity-based costing (ABC) is a costing method that is usually used as a supplement to a company’s usual costing system, and is therefore used for internal decision-making. It is designed to inform managers of costing information for decisions (strategic and others) that potentially affect capacity and consequently “fixed” as well as variable costs. In addition, ABC can also be used to pinpoint activities that would benefit from process improvements.
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 effectiveness-Increase in quantity produced due to a proper flow of raw materials will allow the firm to enjoy economies of scale and be cost effective; the costs of production will decrease with increases in quantity produced.
It was the year 1987 when the Gartner Group popularized the form of full cost accounting named Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)(author, Gartner Total Cost of Ownership). Originally TCO was mainly used in the IT business sector. This changed in the 1980’s when it became clear to many organizations that there is a distinct difference between purchase price and full costs of a products ownership. This brings us towards the main strength of conducting a TCO analysis, besides taking the purchase costs into account, which consist of the amount a money an organization pays for the required service, product or capital outlay. It also considers 1. Acquisition costs; these can consist of sourcing, administration, freight, and taxes. 2. Usage costs, which consists of the costs associated with converting the given product or service into a finished product. And finally 3. End of life cycle costs; the costs or profits incurred when disposing of a product. TCO can be seen as a form of full cost accounting; it systematically collects and presents all the data for each proposed alternative.
This, in order to identify what are the true costs of each customer and each order, enables the company to fully understand its cost structure thereby providing the base for better business choices and higher profitability. These are very sensible goals indeed. Even though the company is profitable, implementing a new, activity-based cost accounting system will allow the company to improve its margins and become even more focused and competitive in the future. 2.2. What is the difference between a.... ...
"College Accounting Coach." Process Costing-Definitions And Features(Part1) « Process Costing « Cost Accounting «. Feb. 2007. Web
The contained paper has been prepared with objectives of elaborating over the three different costing methods namely, Absorption/Full Costing, Variable/Marginal Costing, and Activity Based accounting. The first segment of the report seeks to define and illustrate the costing methods based on the personal understanding of the writer gained through the class room and the academic readings. Part two of the report takes a form of short essay, written critically to evaluate the application of standard costing and variance analysis to any size of business, and concludes with a verdict that whether or not standard costing and variance analysis is applicable to each business with consideration of its costs and benefits of the system.
One problem anyone is going to have in just about any industry is the amount of inventory to keep at warehouses. If there is too much inventory, then high costs will become a problem and hurt your bottom line. At the other end, if you try to save too much money by keeping inventories dangerously low, it may create stock-outs. These can infuriate your clients
Cost allocation is the process of identifying, aggregating, and assigning of cost to various separate activities. There is no overly precise method of charging cost to objects, hence resulting to approximate methods being used to do so. Amongst the approximation basis used includes square footage, headcount, cost of assets employed, and electricity usage amongst others. The main aim of cost allocation is to spread cost in the fairest possible method and also to impact the behavior pattern of the cost.
Activity-based costing (ABC) is a costing method that is designed to provide managers with cost information for strategic and other decisions that potentially affect capacity and therefore “fixed” as well as variable costs. Activity-based costing is mostly used for internal decision making and managing activities while traditional costing method is used to provide data for external financial reports. Most organization uses activity-based costing as an addition system for using traditional absorption costing as sometimes the traditional cost system misleads the product’s profitability. In a company, there are many products on sale, if one product is sold at a high price with low product margin and a product with high product margin at a low price, it may result in a loss. In addition, due to the reason that cost drivers and enterprises business may change, activity-based costing analysis also needs to be revised periodically. This amendment should be prompted to change pricing, product, customer focus and market share strategy to improve corporate profitability.
Every company has some kind of Revenue and they all have costs that are associated with running the company. It is also true that if a company wants to increase their Revenue, their costs will increase too. It is every company’s goal to maximize revenue and either through Production or Services, and minimize cost. These things are easy to figure out, but actually identifying the production and figuring out how it will increase or decrease with change is very difficult.
"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.
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