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Job costing and process costing introduction
How does job costing system differ from process costing system
Job costing and process costing introduction
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Process Costing: A How-To Guide
There are two main types of cost accounting systems, job costing and process costing. In job costing, each job is tracked separately. For example, a company that install roofs can keep track of each cost separately. They can easily track labor by tracking the total amount of human hours spent of the job and what each person was paid. Materials can easily be tracked by tracking the total costs of supplies needed to complete the job. For job costing the total costs of each job can be easily tracked. Some examples of professions that use job costing are carpenters, painters, and computer repair. In process costing, a large number of the same or very similar products are produced in large numbers - examples include
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Process costing is a way of breaking down cost that goes into each product manufactured. This allows for the correct pricing of the product as well as looking at possible inefficiencies in the production process. The following reasons explain the importance of correctly allocating cost to each product.
• “Products must be sold in small quantities, sometimes one at a time (automobiles, loaves of bread), a dozen or two at a time (eggs, cookies), etc.
• Product costs must be transferred from Finished Goods to Cost of Goods Sold as sales are made. This requires a correct and accurate accounting of product costs per unit, to have a proper matching of product costs against related sales revenue.
• A fraction-of-a-cent cost change can represent a large dollar change in overall profitability, when selling millions of units of product a month. Managers must carefully watch per unit costs on a daily basis through the production process, while at the same time dealing with materials and output in huge quantities” (From Academic
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Product costs become part of the cost of Finished Goods, which flows to Cost of Goods Sold. Sales and administrative costs are treated as Period costs against related revenue for the same time period, one year in this case (Wyzant).
Equivalent Units of Production
In the example above 6000 bikes were fully completed. However, in the real world not all units will be fully completed at the end of an accounting period, some will only be partially completed. Equivalent units of production will look at how to convert these partially completed units into completed units for accounting purposes. Equivalent unit calculations are used at the end of a month, to prepare monthly production reports. They are also used at the end of the year to determine ending inventory values.
Steps
Step 1. Determine total amount of units that are not fully completed.
Step 2. Determine the how completed the units are, always expressed in a percent.
Step 3. Multiply these two numbers to get the equivalent units of production.
Step 4. This newly computed number can then be used for all calculations that require the number of completed product to used, for example in our above example with 6000
Overhead based on units sold includes only sales and marketing. Sales and marketing will be targeted mostly towards the products that are already on the market, and so units sold is the best way to associate the cost with each product. (Figure A)
2. Increase accuracy in the product cost calculating. While using ABC, direct materials and direct labors can be classified into products, manufacturing overhead will be classified into the homogeneous cost pool. Then, apportioned the manufacturing overhead into products according to reasonable distribution cost standard. The standard of cost allocation becomes more direct and specific, leading to many traditional uncontrollable indirect cost changes into controllable direct cost. And this provides more accurate information to cost control.
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.
Similarly systematic placement of other components related to cost accounting such as that of products purchased or sold, the record of the services provided by the health department and the expenses of the services acquired from different companies in the form of purchasing of machinery or hiring of experts for the training of a new machine imported. In addition to this record and data regarding the revenue obtained from customers and sales need also be included. (Penner 2003)
Process costing System is an accounting expression which describes one method to determine the manufacturing costs to the units manufactured . Processing is typically used when similar units are mass produced. Also process costing system is a type of accounting process costing which is used to determine the cost of a produced inventory. Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) defines process costing as " The costing method applicable where goods or services result from a sequence of continuous or repetitive operations or processes. Costs are average over the units produced during the period, being initially charged to the operation or process "( College Accounting Coach, 2007). Process costing is more important and appropriate for all businesses producing identical products during which production is an ongoing flow. Toyota is on the of the major companies in the world that used well-known new philosophic management to produce identical products using process costing system.
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.
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.
Job-order costing is used in situations where the organization offers many different products or services, such as in furniture manufacturing, hospitals, and legal firms. Process costing is used where units of product are homogeneous, such as in flour milling or cement production.
Cost can be divided into fixed and variable and by considering into fact that fixed and variable cost can be unarguably split into two, even though they behave differently based on the level of sales of volumes. Since, cost is used in every field to determine the price of an item and the unit sold. Two of the main components of cost are fixed and variable cost and is used to differentiate between the costs that have no direct correlation to business and those that do.
Primary production of homogenous goods and several processes are undertaken for the finished product to be realized is what is called process costing. All stages of processing and costs accrued during manufacturing of a product will be added to the final batch of products. Keenness is
For example: with the increase of the number of products produced, the cost of operating a machine also increase. Second we have batch level costs which is associated with batches; producing a multiple units of the same product that are processed together is called a batch. The third type is product level costs which arise from any activity in order to support the production of products. The fourth and the last type is facility level costs, this costs cannot be determined with a particular unit, product or batch; this costs are fixed with respect to batches, products and number of units produced. A single measure of volume is used for allocating costs to each service or product in traditional method for example: direct material cost, machine hours, direct labor cost and direct labor hours. A cost driver is an activity that generate costs, it can be generated by two types of costs the first is a particular machine 's running costs where the costs is driven by production volume as machine hours; the second is quality inspection costs where the cost is driven by the number of times the relevant activity occurs as the number of
...pplied. Cost estimation and analysis could ultimately determine major decisions in both the business and political worlds today, and play a crucial role even in our day to day lives. Through activity based costing one is able to see what areas need improvement and also whether or not a business will be successful after considering all the factors. These tools are very powerful in drawing wise conclusions from cost analysis and can be a priceless tool to have even in the field of engineering.
As such, there is material cost regulator, manufacturing control, labor cost regulator, excellence control and so on. Conversely, control over the price is implemented through the methods of financial control and typical costing (Meigs, 1998). The control methods aid the management in understanding the operating competence of a firm. Cost accounting also determines the selling price. The intention of all business firms is minimizing costs and maximizing profits. The costs incurred in producing goods and services may be reduced through incorporating alternate but cheaper resources of
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.
Cost optimization: Determine the product costs by tracing detailed cost using analytical tools. To maximize profit by detect precise cost of products, optimize margins by inventory valuation.