In this section of the report, we shall discuss the interlinked processes of Activity Based Costing, Activity Based Budgeting and Activity Based Management by using the help of certain diagrams and also touch upon the evolution of the Activity Based approach over time.
The diagram shown above explains how costs are assigned to a product under the ABC approach. ABC first assigns costs to the activities that are the real cause of the overhead and then assigns the cost of those activities only to the products that are actually demanding the activities.
ABC allocates overheads in a two-stage process. The first stage allocates overhead costs to activity cost pool (Cost Pool A, B or C as shown above). Activity cost pool is the overhead cost attributed to a distinct type of activity. Example of overhead cost pools are ordering materials, setting up machines, assembling products, inspecting products. The second stage assigns the overhead allocated to the activity cost pools to the products (Product A, B & C), using cost drivers for e.g. number of purchase orders, number of setups, labor hours, or number of inspections. (Jerry J. W., Paul D.K., Donald E. K. 2008). The cost drivers measure the number of individual activities undertaken to produce products or provide services. Therefore, they are helpful in order to trace indirect costs to products and in providing two roles for management accountants i.e. assigning the costs to cost objects and explaining cost behaviour.
Activity Based Budgeting is an approach to the budgeting process that focuses on identifying the costs of activities that take place in each area of a business and in determining how those activities relate to one another. The above diagram lays down the link betwe...
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...out the complexity of real operations and accurately assigning costs to products in a way that is in line with the method in which the activities are consumed. As a result, excess capacity costs are not directly assigned to products. Product costs are therefore not distorted by automatically burdening them with the cost of unused capacity. This helps the management take action based on the unused resource capacity. Furthermore, it can scale easily to handle large number of transactions while still delivering fast processing times and real-time reporting.
Therefore, with the increasing success of ABC system the way in which companies operated start changing. This required the budgeting and management system of firms to be in line with activity based approach, thus leading to the implementation of ABB and ABM which were complementary to the successful running of ABC.
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Show MoreActivity-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.
Roybal, H., Baxendale, S.J., and Gupta, M., (1999), “Using Activity-Based Costing and Theory of Constraints to Guide
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.
This paper is going to identify three type of companies that use different costing systems (job costing system, process costing system, and activity-based costing allocations (ABC) ). Also, this paper is going to compare and discuss the similarities and differences you see in the companies.
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.
Additionally for the next year, Quintana should implement and/or refine an Activity Based Budgeting system. Quintana can first assign overhead costs to cost pools that represent the largest activities for Musimundo. These costs would be related to the purchase, location, and stocking of Music (Music represented 41% of the Musimundo business in 2004).
Participative budgeting has the advantage of transferring information from the subordinate to their superior This knowledge is likely to be more reliable and accurate as the subordinate has direct contact with the activity and therefore is in the best position to make budget estimates. Participative Budgeting also gives subordinates the opportunity to discuss organisational issues with superiors, in which an exchange of information and ideas can help to solve problems and agree future actions (Nouri & Parker 1998). This transferral of information is important particularly when dealing with a matter of high task difficulty as, the more difficult a task, the greater the need for consultation with subordinates. Participative budgeting has a higher performance rate when dealing with more difficult and more volatile tasks than non consultative budgeting (Lau & Tan 1998)
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.
Size of work. The cost is used for very small production runs, and the costing process is used for large series
Firms today are trying to introduce activity-based costing into their system, however, some firms are unsuccessful in the implementation, which later result in abandoning the ABC system. According to research, the reason of failure ABC implementation in People’s Bank of China is due to lack of a clear business purpose about the implementation, lack of education about ABC, poor ABC model design, lack of participants, individual and organizational resistance to change, and few outsourcers available. To solve these problems, top management support and cross-functional involvem...
A company's budget serves as a guideline in planning and committing costs in order to meet tactical and strategic goals. Tactical goals such as providing budgetary costs for daily operations, and strategic objectives that include R&D, production, marketing, and distribution are all part of the budgeting process. Serving as a guideline rather than being set in stone, the budget is a snapshot of manager's "best thinking at the time it is prepared." (Marshall, 2003, p.496) The budget is a method in which to reign-in discretionary spending, and will likely show variances between what costs have been anticipated and what costs are actually incurred.
"College Accounting Coach." Process Costing-Definitions And Features(Part1) « Process Costing « Cost Accounting «. Feb. 2007. Web
The first one being weighted average costs which assumes that all costs regardless of if they are accumulated in a previous period or the current one are grouped together and assigned to produced units. The weighted average method is commonly used in instances where there is no standard costing system. The second is the FIFO method which means “first in first out”. FIFO costing is utilized when there are significant changes in product costs from each period. When this occurs management needs to be aware of the new costing levels so it can re-price products appropriately, determine if there are any problems with internal costing that requires a solution or if there is the need to alter manager performance-based
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.
A job order cost system is one in which accumulates cost 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).