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Activity Based Accounting

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Activity Based Costing

Activity Based Costing (ABC) is an accounting technique that allows a firm to get the most accurate view of how much an individual product or service is making or losing for the company. It is notoriously difficult to implement and manage. ABC requires input and radical change in the daily activities of all employees from front line workers all the way up to the CEO. Joseph A. Neff and Thomas G. Cucuzza outline how difficult this process can be in an article that appeared in the Harvard Business Review. They estimate that “no more than 10% of them now use activity-based management in a significant number of their operations. The other 90% have given up, or their programs are stagnating or floundering” (1995). They do highlight one company, the Safety-Kleen Corporation, that was able to successfully introduce the ABC method and is now reaping the benefits of their hard work and diligence. The authors report that Safety-Kleen was rewarded with $12.7 million in cost savings as a result of its implementation of this system and the system has already paid for itself 14 times over from its initial investment. One of the problems prior to the ABC method was installed was that individual branches of the company were not looking at what was the best decision from their actions for the company as a whole, rather they were taking the most expedient or most profitable for their branch location. There was the expected resistance when the ABC method was first implemented as managers and frontline workers feared losing power, it required a tremendous amount of additional work, and that their poor decision making would be exposed. After a three-month trial at one location proved to be highly successful, managers companywide became clamoring to implement the system in their branches. Safety-Kleen is a great example of how ABC costing can make a company more efficient and more profitable.

References
Investopedia. (2016). Activity-Based Costing (ABC) Definition | Investopedia. Retrieved from http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/abc.asp
Ness, J. A., & Cucuzza, T. G. (1995, August). Tapping the Full Potential of ABC. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/1995/07/tapping-the-full-potential-of-abc

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