Factors of application of activity-based costing method: Evidence from a transitional country

Mamata Inc., a manufacturing company of drugs, is considering switching from its traditional cost method to a newly implemented system by their production head. It is activity-based costing so that the two products, Z serum, and W serum, can be sold at their reasonable cost and make them price competitive in the market. Let’s say you allocate $10,000 in overhead to setting up 4,000 machines . Now, you want to know how much goes toward Product XYZ. Two hundred of the machines you set up were Product XYZ. Your overhead costs for Product XYZ were $500 ($2.50 X 200). With an ABC system, you can assign costs to each activity in the production process. This shows you all the costs that go into producing a specific product. You can use this data to set a price that more accurately accounts for how much it costs you to create the product.

For example, the automated ABC model for Hendee Enterprises, a $12 million fabricator of awnings, took three days to calculate costs for its 40 departments, 150 activities, 10,000 orders, and 45,000 line items. Product pricing is really based on the price that the market will bear, but the marketing manager should know what the cost of the product activity based costing is, in order to avoid selling a product that will lose a company money on every sale. ABC is very good for determining which overhead costs should be included in this minimum cost, depending upon the circumstances under which products are being sold. Batch-level activities are used in activity-based costing to identify manufacturing cost-drivers.

Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing

Cost pools are used to account for the common costs of the organization. Explicit cost driver- explicit cost drivers are those which are included in the accounting records of an organization at the time of preparing Financial Statements.

If you think about modern electronics manufacturers like Apple, just think about all the different products they produce all the way from tiny MP3 players to really complex personal computers. ABC as an approach was initially put forward by the Consortium for Advanced Management International, and was then developed by academics in the 1970s and 1980s. However, what some organisations have found is that even though there are theoretical benefits, it’s a complex process, and ABC brings with it some problems. Prepare Product Cost Statement under traditional Absorption Costing and Activity-based Costing Method.

Computation of unit cost under activity-based costing

These traditional costing systems are often unable to determine accurately the actual costs of production and of the costs of related services. Consequently, managers were making decisions based on inaccurate data especially where there are multiple products. Once it is known how to calculate activity rate, then costs can be allocated to all products using the cost allocation formula.

However, application of an activity based recording may be applied as an addition to activity based accounting, not as a replacement of any costing model, but to transform concurrent process accounting into a more authentic approach. In this system it is assumed that there is a causal link between the products and the accompanying costs. Activity Based Costing is especially interesting for companies that, in the light of bad corporate results or strategic considerations , need to achieve an important cost reduction. Activity Based Costing is a system that goes beyond traditional cost price models with respect to indirect cost calculation models. The idea is that activities are required to produce products—activities such as purchasing materials, setting up machinery, assembling products, and inspecting finished products. Facility support activities are necessary for development and production to take place.

Internal Rate of Return (IRR)

ABC is designed to track the cost of activities, so you can use it to see if activity costs are in line with industry standards. If not, ABC is an excellent feedback tool for measuring the ongoing cost of specific services as management focuses on cost reduction. The first step in ABC is to identify those costs that we want to allocate. This is the most critical step in the entire process, since we do not want to waste time with an excessively broad project scope. For example, if we want https://www.bookstime.com/ to determine the full cost of a distribution channel, we will identify advertising and warehousing costs related to that channel, but will ignore research costs, since they are related to products, not channels. Generally, the scope of an ABC project should be kept fairly narrow, to make the project easier to manage and more cost-effective. That drives the prevalence to slow processes in services and administrations, where staff time consumed per task defines a dominant portion of cost.

That identifies all kinds of company’s costs and allocates them to the costs of the products based on actual consumption. E.g., Material ordering costs, Machine setup costs, Inspection and testing charges, Material handling and storing costs, etc. If you find that some activities cost more than they should, you can find new methods to do something. With the time-driven approach, Hunter’s ABC team of analysts was able to group the three activities into a single departmental process, called inside sales order entry. The team learned that it took about 5 minutes to enter the basic order information, plus 3 minutes for each line item, and an additional 10 minutes if the order had to be expedited. If the customer were new, 15 more minutes would be required to set up the customer in the company’s computer system. So far, we have relied on an important simplifying assumption that all orders or transactions of a particular type are the same and require the same amount of time to process.

Integrating EVA and process based costing

We’re told that the supplier ordering costs are expected to be $171,000. We can also see that the company produces two different products – Product A and Product B, and we’re expected to make 80,000 units of both products over the next period. Overheads, while they still existed, were a relatively small proportion of what Ford’s production costs were. As a result, the need to employ an approach such as ABC, which offers a really deep dive on the overheads, just wasn’t required.

We also reference original research from other reputable publishers where appropriate. You can learn more about the standards we follow in producing accurate, unbiased content in oureditorial policy. ABC is used to get a better grasp on costs, allowing companies to form a more appropriate pricing strategy. ABC can contribute to better cost price calculations for the benefit of the corporate strategy on the market. Processing loans includes activities such as meeting with customers, reviewing customer applications, and running credit reports.

Activity-Based Costing: A Business Case:

The diversity of thinking and collaborative efforts, based on accurate data, also empowered UPMC to achieve standardization and consistency in its MFM department and across its system of 30-plus academic, community, and specialty hospitals. Companies that produce several different products may believe that the benefits of implementing ABC will outweigh the costs. However, management must be willing to use the ABC information to benefit the company. Companies like Chrysler Group LLC have been known to try ABC, only to meet resistance from their managers. Until managers are willing to use the ABC information to make improvements in the organization, there is no point in implementing such a system. The presented activity-based costing model is a practical tool to evaluate the actual cost structure of a radiotherapy department and to evaluate possible resource or practice changes.

• The difference in product costs under the two methods is driven by the need for more designs and time maintaining customer relationships for the custom chairs.
• Gillian Davenport is a business writer with professional experience in finance and accounting.
• Conversely, it is of less use in a streamlined environment where production processes are abbreviated, so that costs are easy to assign.
• Activity-based costing benefits the costing process by expanding the number of cost pools that can be used to analyze overhead costs and by making indirect costs traceable to certain activities.
• It determines the total expenses incurred in manufacturing goods and allocates them to different departments or service sectors based on valid identifiers known as cost drivers.
• This means that $200,000 will first be allocated to batches of products to be manufactured , and then be assigned to the units of product in each batch .

Absorption-costing refers to equally assigning the value of overhead costs across all inventory. This accounting method doesn’t account for products that may have higher indirect costs, but activity-based costing does. Companies use activity-based costing to identify and allocate the costs of each activity within the company to each product and service in an accurate way. The method uses an estimate of usage of each activity per product, allowing the organization to better track costs of activities required for production.