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Usefulness of the costing system
Standard costing as a tool for control
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Standard costing
Even considering the fact that standard costing can create variances between standard cost and actual cost, this system is the most commonly used costing system in all around the world. Standard costing provides easier to predict the cost and understand the cost, and also easier in decision making as well. Standard costing also required less time consuming for the management to record and maintain the system.
Standard costing is the system that organized cost for activities and the record to decide the cause for any variances. Standard costing can be a system to helps management account to calculating costs.
For example, the company predict the labour cost at the beginning of a year $3 per unit. After certain time, the actual
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If actual cost is bigger than the standard costs, it is an unfavorable variance, if actual cost is less than the standard cost, it is a favorable variance.
Standard Costing
Whereas normal costing uses actual costs (or as close as can be determined), standard costing values manufactured products using predetermined costs and rates for materials, direct labor, and manufacturing overhead. These standard costs are used to come up with COGS and to value inventories. If the actual costs vary only slightly from the standard costs, the resulting variances will be assigned to the cost of goods sold. If the variances are significant, they should be prorated to the cost of goods sold and to the inventories.
Standard costing takes the idea of applying a predetermined overhead rate and extends it to materials and direct labor as well. Therefore the variances provide different information to management.
Why Use Standard Costing?
There are several reasons for using a standard costing
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Company developed strong and experienced teams;
2. Company developed efficient training methods;
3. Managers are over estimating standard costs.
Although favourable variance creates positive side effect of exceeding projected profits, it is still a problem that should be addressed. Further investigation of possible causes is required. If investigation points to increased efficiency in work or in training, these causes should be increased further and duplicated across all divisions within the company. In case of simple over estimating standard costs, underlying cause might be either:
1. Managers are overly cautious and estimate working hours for their teams. This should be corrected by removing possible penalties when team exceeds their budgets and adjusting future estimations based on historical performance numbers;
2. Managers are over estimating working hours for their teams in order to demonstrate high performance and claiming possible financial bonuses that company might reward to high performing teams. This points to much larger ethical issue and needs to be corrected for future periods.
Standard and actual cost for
Based off of the data provided in the case study it would appear that under the traditional costing. Which are the cost that were incurred to produce OS-367. It appears that those cost were being allocated to GS-157 and HS-241. The cost per unit for OS-367 was $10 under the traditional costing system and the same has become $13.75 under the ABC system.
Organizations face massive challenges in attracting and retaining a high-quality and productive workforce. Companies are continually looking for new ways to keep their employees satisfied at all levels in order to harness greater productivity and ideas from people while keeping them motivated and happy. One real challenge examined earlier is the need to transform General Motors to be a much more productive and fully utilized organization by examining the hourly workforce. This is a great change from the traditional "us versus them" mentality of the past between management and the union.
Cost-plus pricing, it the industry pricing standard, and is a method to determine a price of the product by finding the cost per unit and then including a mark-up
Across the blue seas of the Atlantic, and even here in America, companies and governments have already begun to experiment with and implement the shorter working week for numerous of its working citizens and employees. Many European countries, including Sweden, Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Germany have already taken several steps toward adopting a smarter and more balanced version of the standard, 40 to 50 hour work week (Coote). With these new adjustments, the European leaders hope to encourage good working habits and growth among its staffers. Although several governments in Europe and other parts of the world have already started instituting the shorter work week, many American companies are beginning to follow the trail in the sand. Among these companies include the online technology school Treehouse, the service company KPMG, and a web application company called Basecamp (Sahadi). In a recent interview with the Treehouse Company CEO Ryan Carson, Ryan revealed that after implementing a shorter, more flexible working week for him and his employees, he saw a number of profound effects that the change had on his business and its employed workers. When asked for a reason as to why he began and continues the daring concept, Ryan stated that “The quality of the work, I believe, is higher. Thirty-two hours of higher quality work is better than 40 hours of lower quality work.” To acknowledge the success of businesses that have adopted the shorter working week in our own society, such as the Treehouse Company, is to take steps toward establishing a higher and healthier precedent that all of America’s current and future employers can follow. It is with these examples that the Magna Carta of the weekly working period can be rewritten to support an increase in flexibility, accessibility, and
In Forsyth (2003), time management is about working actively to create efficiency and effectiveness in a way that makes achieving your target more likely. Good effective time management is a core skill, a differentiating factor which allows you to have an edge over other people (Williams & Cooper 2002). Time management is not optional; it is something that everyone has to acquire in order to work effectively, to achieve work-life balance and most importantly helping us to stay focus. Everyone practices time management to some degree; the only question is how well they do it and how it affects what they do (Hawkins 1996).
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.
There must be complete honesty and understanding between the hourly worker and management if high efficiency is to be obtained”. This shows how harmoniously the labor and management have to work together to produce success.
g is an important tool that can help management in making informed decision. Though it is not legally required but still it is necessary to run an entity effectively. Cost accounting is turned toward the future. There are different methods of costing in Cost Accounting: Absorption costing and Variable costing. Both have some merits over the other.
Process costing is used for homogenous products (continuous flow processes such as producing cans of soda).
The healthcare workers working extended hours has been the potential (negative) impact on the quality of patient care and on patient safety. Errors during medication administration, as well as during procedures and charting have been suggested as reasons for
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
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.
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.
To achieve equilibrium, H&M encourages open communication and employee engagement within the company to satisfy both goal and needs. They came up with an “open book principle” granting every employee the right to express their thoughts on work related issues directly with management. They, too, reinforce the Human Resource Management system by having performance appraisal, a method to evaluate job performance. H&M has done it by using the method of providing feedback as they believe in learning through their own mistakes. Besides, to ensure workers’ work-life balance, the company strongly discourage overtime work and endorse flexible working hours. Everyone in the company is given the opportunity to schedule around their personal and working responsibility. The company also provide comprehensive fringe benefits for their worker which includes staff discounts, incentive bonuses, maternity leave and many more. This is because the Human Resources in H&M emphasise more on job satisfaction rather than title or pay structure. Analysis indicates that H&M has incorporated job enlargement into their business whereby they increase task variety by combining two or more task for more experience working. However, the volume of task to be done is too gruelling for employees causing their company to be listed as one of the highest employee turnover and lowest labour morale in 2008. This shows they have poor job
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.