...Inventory System Overview and Requirements Table of Contents System Overview 6 Brief Description 6 Project Initiator and Sponsor 6 Intended Users and Stakeholders 7 Requirements Specification 7 Overall Goals and Objectives 7 Elicitation Methods for Gathering Requirements 7 Observation and interviews 8 Document inspection 8 Functional Requirements 8 Front counter – sales of new and used video games 8 Front counter – purchase and intake of used video games 9 Front counter – customer requests 9 Bookkeeping – reconciling purchase and sales receipts with inventory levels and month-end reporting 10 Owner – purchasing 11 Owner – reporting 11 Nonfunctional requirements 11 Usability 11 Performance 12 Security 12 Stability and availability 12 Assumptions and constraints 13 Emergency preparedness 13 PC setup and maintenance 13 Network maintenance 13 Security 13 Functional Decomposition Diagram 14 Use Case Diagram 15 Data Flow Diagram 16 Sequence Diagram 17 User Input Forms 18 Testing 20 Unit Testing 20 System Testing 21 User Acceptance Testing 22 User acceptance stakeholders. 22 Error documentation and tracking 22 Quality Assurance Plan 23 Design. 23 Design and coding. 23 Testing. 23 Development Strategy 24 Insourcing. 24 Insourcing benefits 24 Insourcing challenges 25 Insourcing cost analysis 25 Outsourcing 25 Application Service Provider 25 ASP benefits 26 ASP challenges 26 ASP Cost...
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...Question 1 Introduction This report aims to compare the differences between Traditional costing system and Activities Based Costing (ABC) system. The advantages and disadvantages of both concepts determine which method is more superior for the business. Traditional costing concepts Traditional costing is to consider how much will cost to produce a product. It plays an important role in the business to predicting the profitability of a product. Traditional costing is also well known as the conversional method costing, which refers to the allocation of manufacturing overhead costs to the product manufactured (Harold, n.d.). Traditional costing assigns manufacturing overhead on the basis of volume of a cost driver, such as direct labor hours, production machine hours or direct material hours, all of which are needed to produce an item and the number of units produced. Different from activity- based costing, traditional costing is emphasis on costing information of external financial report in the business, because it provides the value of cost of goods sold. Many manufacturing companies use traditional costing system in order to divide the total cost of a product by the direct labor cost. Generally, the traditional costing method users make the assumption that the volume metric is the underlying driver of manufacturing overhead cost. Hence, under traditional costing method, accountants regard manufacturing costs only to product. Whereas, some cost such as administrative expenses...
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...Project Management Office The project office is the office or department responsible for establishing, maintaining, and enforcing project management processes, procedures, and standards. It provides services, support, and certification for project managers [web definition]. In a broader sense, if an organization undertakes one or two project at any given time, it may able to easily implement project management discipline. However, the larger an organization gets, and the more projects that are executed at one time, the more difficult it becomes to develop a comprehensive methodology, train everyone and enforce the consistent use of the technology on all projects. Without this consistency, the full value of implementing a common value of a project management methodology is not reached (TenStep, Inc). There are many organizations that have started realizing the potential value of establishing a Project Management Office to strengthen their competitive advantage. The PMO structures project management into an organized, systematic approach that includes the following goals (Engle, 2005): 1. Project Definition: Goals and objectives, organization charts, and roles and responsibilities are documented. Some companies adopt a charter that lays out every aspect of the project before the first dollar is spent. 2. Project planning and control: The charter documents what is to be done, and the project plan lays out how it will be accomplished. The project plan includes the schedule, required...
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...Development of an E-Commerce Website for ABC Corporation Tammy Semelsberger Managerial Applications of Information Technology – IS535 DeVry University, Keller Graduate School of Management August 18, 2012 Table of Contents Abstract 3 Company Background 3 Business Problems 4 High-Level Solution 5 Benefits of Solving the Problem 6 Business/Technical Approach 7 Business Process Changes 7 Technology / Business Practices Used to Augment Solutions 9 Conclusions and Overall Recommendations 10 High-level Implementation Plan 10 Summary 11 Summary of Recommendations 11 References 13 Development of an E-Commerce Website for ABC Corporation Abstract ABC Corporation (ABC) is a clothing store in Chicago, IL. They are a local store that needs to increase profitability and competitiveness. Designing a custom e-commerce online store on their current website, that is tailored to ABC’s goals and customer needs, is key in attracting and maintaining a customer base, and increasing profitability. The business problem to be solved is how to implement, market, and maintain a successful e-commerce site while building customer loyalty, increasing profitability, improving strategic planning, and expanding the market. ABC will use an outside source to develop, produce and maintain this store. There will be reporting systems in place to analyze data, in-turn...
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...Activity Based Costing in the Public Sector By: Brandy Medina Public sector organizations at all levels and of all types are facing intense pressure to do more with less. Governments at all levels in almost all the countries in the world are feeling some kind of pressure. The pressure on spending comes from many sources, i.e. from politicians aiming to win taxpayers’ approval. There is pressure from the competition with other cities to attract homebuyers or with other counties, states or nations to attract businesses. In the United States, the cities don’t just compete against other cities – each city competes against its own suburbs, and the suburbs often have an advantage in attracting residents and businesses. They may offer lower taxes, better schools and less crime. As residents and businesses relocate, the cities and towns they departed from lose a little more of their tax base. Less money is available unless tax rates are raised. Additional pressure may come from declining demand, regardless of the reasons. An example is rural road maintenance. In these cases, economies of scale are less easily achieved, and the final costs become more expensive. In the United States, the federal government is shifting some responsibilities to state and local governments but providing only limited funding to fulfill those obligations. Regardless of where the pressure is coming from, the message is: better, faster, cheaper – hold the line on taxes, but don’t let service slip. Meeting...
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...Africa) Activity based costing (ABC) in the public sector: benefits and challenges Abstract Peter Drucker (1986), in “Management: Tasks, responsibilities, and practices” states that business enterprises and public-service institutions, are organs of society which do not exist for their own sake, but to fulfil a specific social purpose and to satisfy need of society, community, or individual. To achieve the above objectives, managers of these institutions must plan, control and make decisions about the resources entrusted to their care. A key element of efficient organizational decision making is to use reliable information, both operational and managerial accounting data for analysis and decision support. This can be achieved by using activity-based costing (ABC) method. The underlying premise of ABC is that resources are consumed by activities to produce outputs or products and services (US General Services Administration, 2006). It focuses on the allocation of indirect costs to products and services, which was traditionally done on arbitrary basis. ABC is useful in two situations: areas with large and growing indirect and support costs (Krumwiede, 1998a; Becker, Bergener and Räckers, 2010), and areas with a large variety in products, customers and processes (Cooper, 1988a, 1988b; Groot, 1999). The unique characteristic of public sector organizations as overhead-intensive service entities, therefore, is amenable to the use of ABC methodology (Becker, Bergener, and...
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...DBS CONSULTING SERVICES REPORT The purpose of this report is to present a comparison of the profits of E-Commerce consulting and Information Systems consulting lines of DBS Consulting Services, using the Activity-Based Costing system (ABC) and the conventional costing system based on computing hours. ABC provides more detailed and accurate information than the conventional costing system because ABC is based on consumption of resources by production of a product or service line and focuses on the activities that drive costs, recognising that activities consume resources. The conventional method allocates overhead costs based on hours consumed (in this case computing hours), which may not represent the actual consumption of indirect resources expended by the service. A costing system should provide information to help minimise waste, but should not be wasteful in it-self . The resources required to design, implement and maintain a costing system should be less than the benefit derived from the use of the system. This report is to compare the conventional costing system against an ABC System for DBS Consulting Services and will discuss the following: 1. ABC improving costing accuracy 2. Profitability of DBS Consulting Service using conventional costing procedures and ABC 3. Recommendation of the adoption of ABC based the results conventional costing and ABC 4. Aggressive expansion? 5. Factors to be taken into account when implementing ABC 6. How to encourage positive...
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... | | | | [pic] Executive Summary The purpose of this report was to analysis costing system at John Deere Component Works (B). Specific objectives were to analyze the reports prepared by William and Vintila and offer recommendations on their suggestion. Table of Contents 1. Executive Summary ………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 2 2. Table of Content ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..3 3. Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 4 4. Conclusion & Recommendation ………………………………………………………………………………………………. 5 5. Discussion 5.1 Product Cost under ABC ………………………………………………………………………………………….. 6 5.2 Product Mix has shifted ………………………………………………………………………………………….. 6-7 5.3 Assumption about Cost Variability in ABC ………………………………………………………………. 7-8 5.4 Development of ABC ……………………………………………………………………………………………… 8 5.5 Implementation of ABC …………………………………………………………………………………………. 8-9 5.6 Acceptance of ABC ………………………………………………………………………………………………… 9 5.7 Increasing Lot Size ………………………………………………………………………………………………….9-10 6. References …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….11 Introduction John Deere had been structured to be a captive producer of parts for...
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...ABC learning a CSR Dilemma Synopsis ABC Learning was an Australian provider of early child hood education services, founded in Queensland in 1988. Through its 18 child care centres it was the largest almost monopolistic single operator of early childhood education services in Australia by 1997. Led by founder and CEO Eddy Groves, ABC Learning continued to grow, by opening new centres and the acquisitions of competitors both locally and internationally. The company experienced a significant drop in their share price in 2008. Trading in the company shares was suspended in early 2008, closely followed by the company going into receivership in November of 2008. This essay will examine ABC Learning and assess the impact of the company’s corporate social responsibility policy or lack thereof and how this contributed to their spectacular collapse. Particular attention will be concentrating on the ethical internal running of the company’s corporate structure and executive leadership, focussing in particular on Eddy Groves’ poor decision making, creative accounting and resulting organisational culture. Dahlberg & Moss (2005) claim that ethics is a practical matter which involves thinking about every day actions and decisions either individually or collectively and then responding with respect for all concerned. When values underpin our responses and choices, ethics is at work. In some instances our decision making can be hindered because there...
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... | |Assessment 1- Report | |Case Study Not as Easy as 1, 2, 3 | | | Contents Executive Summary 3 1- Introduction 4 1.1 Background to the report 4 1.2 Scope 4 1.3 Aims 5 2- Discussion 6 2.1 Organizational Justice 6 2.2 Perception errors 7 2.3 Stress 7 2.4 Exit-Voice- loyalty-Neglect model 8 2.5 Team work 8 2.6 Motivation 9 3- Literature review 9 3.1 Organizational Justice 9 3.2 Maslow’s needs hierarchy theory 12 3.3 Expectancy theory 14 4- Solutions and suggestions 18 4.1 Organisational Justice 18 4.2 Stress 19 4.3 Improving feedback process 20 5- Conclusion 21 References 23 Executive Summary There are three purposes for this report. It attempts to indentify the problems in the case study Not as Easy as 1, 2, 3. Accordingly, it discusses about six main problems in ABC consulting firm that have negative impact on the organization effectiveness and the productivity of the objectives. These problems are; ABC consulting organization...
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...(12F360) SCM Introduction Activity-based costing (ABC) is a costing methodology that identifies activities in an organization and assigns the cost of each activity with resources to all products and services according to the actual consumption by each. This model assigns more indirect costs (overhead) into direct costs compared to conventional costing. CIMA (Chartered Institute of Management Accountants) defines ABC as an approach to the costing and monitoring of activities which involves tracing resource consumption and costing final outputs. Resources are assigned to activities, and activities to cost objects based on consumption estimates. The latter utilize cost drivers to attach activity costs to outputs. Aims of model With ABC, a company can soundly estimate the cost elements of entire products ACTIVITIES and services. That may help inform a company's decision to either: * Identify and eliminate those products and services that are unprofitable and lower the prices of those that are overpriced (product and service portfolio aim) * Or identify and eliminate production or service processes that are ineffective and allocate processing concepts that lead to the very same product at a better yield (process re-engineering aim). In a business organization, the ABC methodology assigns an organization's resource costs through activities to the products and services provided to its customers. ABC is generally used as a tool for understanding product and...
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...Time-Driven ABC Companies have shied away from activity based costing, because it was not an accurate assessment of operations, time consuming and too expensive to build and maintain. As a result managers have veered away from using traditional ABC in their organizations, and needed to find a solution to the problem. The new approach relies on informed managerial estimates rather than on employee surveys. It also provides managers with a far more flexible cost model to capture all the complex details of their operations. The way people traditionally constructed the ABC model was the root of the problem with it. To build a traditional ABC model a department would survey employees to estimate the percentage of time they spend on activities and then assign the department's resource expenses according to the average percentages you get from the survey. Armed with figures, known as the cost-driver rates, managers could assign the costs of the department's resources to the customers and products that use its services. This worked well in the limited setting in which it was initially applied, typically a single department, plant, or location. The problem arises when you try to roll out this approach on a large scale for use on a continuous basis. The systems that are put in place are updated infrequently; the model's estimates of process, product, and customer costs soon become inaccurate. What's more, people waste their time arguing about the accuracy of cost-driver rates that...
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...Advanced Management Accounting UMAC3J-20-3 Assignment 2012/2013 Monday 10th December 2012 09016707 The Development of the Techniques of Activity Based Costing, Budgeting and Management from the 1990s to the Present Day. Executive Summary: This report aims to explore the developments of activity based costing, budgeting and management from the 1990’s to the present day. This report aims to evaluate the criticisms made during this period by Kaplan and Cooper, and to use a range of theories and developments to assess whether these criticisms have been overcome. The use of case studies to evaluate these changes in practice will give supporting evidence to the changes that have been made. Introduction to Kaplan and Cooper’s Criticisms: Since 1987 when H. Thomas Johnson and Robert S. Kaplan wrote ‘Relevance Lost: the rise and fall of Management Accounting’, there have been significant developments in the traditional cost accounting methods used at the time; these mainly being absorption and marginal costing. Although these methods are “geared toward compliance with financial reporting requirements”1, they often resulted in misleading and inaccurate cost information used by managers. Traditional costing methods use a ‘blanket’ overhead recovery rate which meant when the number of overhead costs increased with more complex production schemes, cost allocations were inaccurate. This method was now “invalid relative to how the products and services consumed costs”2. With...
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...critical to identifying customers, defining outputs, and developing systems to collect and trace the cost of resources to outputs. One of the more popular models for collecting and tracing costs is known as activitybased costing (ABC). This article examines how one government acquisition organization is using ABC to understand and define outputs and processes, to collect and trace the cost of doing business, and how it plans to use this information in the future. T he Federal Financial Management Improvement Act (FFMIA) of 1996 requires agencies to produce cost and financial information that will assist the Congress and financial managers with evaluating the cost and performance of federal programs and activities and thus improve decision making. The law is intended to increase the capability of agencies to monitor the execution of their budgets by providing better support for the preparation of reports that compare spending of resources to results of activities. This Act has provided the impetus for government agencies to understand, measure, and manage their costs. Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC), headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, has embraced this philosophy. AFMC provides the Air Force with integrated management of research, development, test, acquisition and support activities needed to advance and use technology to acquire and sustain weapon systems. AFMC has reorganized itself into business areas to help identify and...
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...that DOP suffered a net profit before taxes of -1.3% in the year 2000. This memo is in direct regards to the inadequacies of the existing cost allocation system and investigation of using an Activity Based Costing (ABC) method. Dakota Office Products utilizes a traditional cost allocation system. Direct and indirect costs associated with operations are allocated to sold goods. DOP offers a comprehensive product line in office supplies. Traditional cost systems used in such product diversity can cause cost distortions (Martin). Costs were allocated using the activity based costing method to determine where these distortions originate. Six activities were detailed and the ABC driver rate was calculated using the actual cost from the income statement and employee determined capacities (Appendix I). DOP has recently implemented a new convenience to customers with “desktop deliveries”. Warehouse personnel and a small fleet of trucks were assigned to complete the deliveries for the customer at only a 2% premium. When calculating the ABC cost rates, it was immediately evident that the desktop deliveries were a significant cost driver at $220/carton. This rate is more than four times any other cost driver rate. The driver rates were multiplied by the actual services provided, and a revised customer profitability report using the ABC method was generated (Appendix I). When using the existing cost allocation method, both Customer A and Customer B depict contributions over 6% to...
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