...hours | $ 25.00 per hour | Units Produced | Direct Materials Costs | Number of Parts Used | Direct Labor Hours | 3 800 | $ 142 000 | 83 600 | 17 180 | Question a: ABC Costing Activity | Total Time | Cost-Driver Rate | Total Cost | Material Handling | 83 600 | $ 0.25 | $ 20 900 | Cutting & Lathe Work | 83 600 | $ 1.80 | $ 150 480 | Assembly & Inspection | 17 180 | $ 25.00 | $ 429 500 | Total | | | $ 600 880 | Direct Labor Cost = $ 20 x 17 180 hours = $ 343 600 Direct Material Cost = $ 142 000 Total Manufacturing Cost = $ 600 880 + $ 343 600 + $ 142 000 = $ 1 086 480 Cost per unit = $ 1 086 480 3800 units = $ 285.92 per unit Question b: Traditional Costing Predetermined Overhead Application Rate: Predetermined Overhead (Labor per unit) = $ 325 000 + $ 2 340 000 + $ 5 000 000 200 000 hours = $ 38.325 per hour Total Overhead Cost = 17 180 hours x $ 38.325 = $ 658 423.50 Total Direct Cost = $ 20 x 17 180 hours = $ 343 600 Total Direct Materials Cost = $ 142 000 Total Manufacturing Cost = $ 658 423.50 + $ 343 600 + $ 142 000 = $ 1 144 023.50 Cost per unit = $ 1 144 023.50 3800 units = $ 301.06 per unit Question c: Absorption costing is the traditional 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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...The implementation of Activity Based Costing (ABC) in Chinese refining manufacturers Table of contents 1. Introduction 2 1.1 Research background 2 1.2 domestic and foreign research status 4 1.2.1 Activity-based costing development process 4 1.2.2 Status quo of Activity-Based Costing Development and Application in China 6 1.3 research contents 8 2. Related theories 9 2.1concept of ABC 9 2.2 rationales 10 2.3 difference between ABC and traditional costing 12 2.3.1. Different calculating targets 12 2.3.2 Different calculation 12 2.3.3. Different Finished goods costs term 13 3. Research methodology 13 3.1 case study 13 3.2 The survey method 13 3.3 Literature 14 4. Research Results 14 4.1 problems of traditional costing method in oil refining enterprise 14 4.2suggestions for Chinese enterprises’ application ABC 15 Bibliography 15 1. Introduction 1.1 Research background With the rapid development of the national economy, enterprises’ competition is increasingly fierce; many companies are using advanced science and technology to achieve competitive advantage in the market. Market competition and technological progress are the two fundamental economic factors which generate activity-based costing. Since The beginning of 1980s of the 20th century, the activity based cost method is paid a wide range of attention; the developed countries gradually adopt it in a number of advanced enterprises...
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...Five myths about time-driven activity-based costing The straight facts about traditional and time-driven costing methodologies After decades of proven success, activity-based costing (ABC) has come under fire from its earliest and most active proponents. Robert S. Kaplan and others are promoting a “new, innovative, time-driven methodology” that presumably “delivers great improvements to the older systems of 15 years ago.”1 Companies are replacing their current costing solutions to try to get strategic information faster and with less maintenance. Is this approach really new and revolutionary? Does it deliver on its promise? Time-driven ABC vs. traditional ABC Traditional ABC is a “push” model of costing. You start with total expenses spent on various types of resources, such as salaries or supplies, and then determine what percentage of each resource is associated with each product or service. Then you apply that ratio to the total cost, which generates cost allocations for every product. In contrast, time-driven ABC is a “pull” model of costing. You start with estimates of two parameters: units of time required to perform an activity and the cost per unit of time. You then multiply this information by the quantity of the product. For resources not measured by units of time, the costing methodology can accept other measures. For instance, the capacity of a distribution center could be measured by available area and priced at cost per cubic meter. The capacity of...
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...The Emergence of Activity Based Costing The Traditional cost accounting methods were designed around 1870-1920 and in those days industry was labour intensive and there were no machinery. The product variety was small and the overhead costs in companies were generally low compared to today. During the 1980s, it became clear the conventional techniques for recovering overheads were increasingly providing the management with cost information that was inaccurate and misleading. As a result new techniques for overhead recovery were needed. In order to produce a more accurate costing system, cooper and Kaplan in 1987 developed a more refined approach for assigning overhead to products and computing product costs and called this approach Activity Based Costing (ABC). It was first clearly defined as a chapter in their book Accounting and Management: A field study perspective. (Kaplan, Roberts 1987). While mainly used for private businesses, ABC has recently been used in public forums, such as those that measure government efficiency Features of the ABC and Traditional costing system Activity Based Costing can be defined as an accounting methodology that assigns costs to activities based on their use of resources, rather than products or services. This enables resources and other associated costs to be more accurately attributed to the products and the services which they use. It doesn’t change or eliminate any costs; it provides detailed information about how costs are consumed...
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...Management Accounting Assignment Activity-Based Costing (ABC) is a theory for cost management controlling. Activity based on the management aims to describe a company as a series of activities which are related to customers’ desires and costs. Activity-Based Costing is a process for calculating the cost of the activities of an organization. Activities within an organization are identified and an average cost is related to each activity. The total cost of a product is the sum of the total costs of activities required to produce the product. The cost of every activity for products is identified as (the average cost of the activity) * (the number of times the activity, which is required for that product). Cooper and Kaplan (1992) explained how Activity-Based Costing allows the very important distinction between resource usage and resource purchase. The difference is the unused capacity. Removal of this unused capacity allows costs to be decreased. Turney (1992) thought that the important non-temporal links between cost and company quality. He also explained how it is important between assets, resource drivers, activities, activity drivers, processes, company performance, cost drivers, and cost. Turney (1989) claimed that underlying Activity-Based Costing is type of an assumption that activities cost resources and products consume activities. Activities contain the establishing vendor relations, spending, paying out, setting up a machine, running the equipment, reorganizing...
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...RJET TASK 4 A1. COSTING METHOD Activity based costing or ABC accounting as it is called distributes manufacturing overhead costs to products in a smarter way than in the traditional way. This way of simply assigning costs on the basis of machine hours. Activity based costing assigns costs first to the activities that make up the real overhead. Then it assigns a cost to the activities that affect only the products produce. ABC vs Traditional Costing This is one main difference between ABC (Activity Based Costing) and TCA (Traditional Cost Accounting) it is Activity Based Costing is complex and takes more time and effort to figure out and Traditional Cost Accounting is simple and to the point. Activity Based Costing began some time in 1981 so it is still a relatively new costing bases. But Traditional Cost Accounting has been around since the late 1800’s. In TCA you figure the cost of the items used to produce the product and the resources that were alos used. But in the ABC method you only figure the cost for the actual materials that were used to finish the product. Activity Based Costing is a more accurate way of costing produts and is preferred over the Traditional Cost Accounting method. The ABC method is normally implemented when overheads are high and there is a large amount of misc. products. If the product costing method in incorrect then you may be under cutting your competitors, but you might also be losing your profits at the same time. So it is better for the...
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...using the same traditional costing systems, Cooper and Kaplan (1991).The absorption costing paved way due to the lack of visibility for indirect costs so the ABC has been adopted by many organizations rapidly. According to Krajnc et al. (2011), the main difference of ABC to absorption costing lies on how they treat indirect production costs (overheads) and sales. The fundamental goal of ABC is to identify as much as possible direct relationships between products and resources consumed through activities conducted from production to disposal. The ABC system is based on the assumption that the support activities such as activities and sales, the cost of which traditional systems characterized as overheads, offer opportunities for the implementation of activities, and thus are not just for sharing costs. In an absorption costing when the volume of overheads is larger, the likelihood of distortions in reported costs is also greater. In general, overheads that exceed 15 percent of the total cost can cause inaccuracies, Turney (1996). Many companies had major problems by these inaccuracies and so they started using ABC. The traditional approach to cost allocation consists of three steps: Concentration of costs in the productive and non - productive parts. Allocation of the cost of non-productive segments in section production. Distribution of the resulting costs of production in the department products, services and customers. The costs resulting from the traditional approach suffers...
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...10.00 Direct Labor Rate Per Hour $18.00 $24.00 * Manufacturing overhead costs: Building depreciation $ 40,000 Maintenance 15,000 Purchasing 20,000 Inspection 12,000 Indirect materials 15,000 Supervision 30,000 Supplies 3,000 Total manufacturing overhead costs $135,000 Selling and Administrative expenses: Commission to sales person 3 % of Sales Revenue Advertising, CEO salary, etc. $ 30,000 per year. * These manufacturing overhead costs are company-wide and fixed: they do not vary with the volume of manufacturing activity. The company allocates overhead costs using the traditional method. Its activity base is...
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...Requirements Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using an Activity Based Costing (ABC) over other costing systems. Also identify at least one company that uses ABC and describe how it benefits the company. Introduction This paper has been formulated in order to determine the basic nature of Activity Based Costing, its advantages and disadvantages. These points are further elucidated by a case study of a Taiwanese hot spring country inn’s implementation of the ABC system. What is Activity Based Costing The Activity-Based Costing theory started in 1987 by Robert S. Kaplan and W. Bruns as a better alternative to the traditional costing method. It has activities as the fundamental cost objects and assumes that activities cause costs and that cost objects create demands for the activities. A traditional costing system uses a single, volume based cost driver. In most cases the traditional system assigned the overhead cost to products on the basis of their usage of direct labor. For this reason traditional cost systems often yields inaccurate product costs and becomes inadequate in terms of calculating true cost to produce specific products for specific customers. ABC system was developed to overcome the shortcomings of the traditional method by using many cost drivers to allocate a indirect costs instead of just using one cost driver such as machine hours. ABC system uses a different approach and allows improvement on the control of overheads by cost/cause relationships...
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...Critically discuss: a) Why Cambridge Hospital Community Health Network embarked on the ABC study? There are two main reasons why the Cambridge Hospital Community Health Network (the Network) embarked on the Activity Based Costing (ABC) study. Firstly, the Network needed to gain a better understanding of its unit-of-service costs, which had been rising at a rate of 10% per year. In fact it had recently been rated the third-highest cost hospital in the state of Massachusetts. Being a high cost provider could make the Network uncompetitive for Medicaid and other public contracts. Secondly, the Network’s new operating budget required a $14 million reduction, which represented 15% of the total hospital network’s operating budget, in expenditures during the next two fiscal years. This was largely due to the downward pressure on hospital revenues by the government reform and managed care forced providers to cope with conditions that were constantly changing, while continuing to provide quality health care services in a time of intense competition. The Network's traditional method of analysing costs is the Medicare step-down costing system. It gave little information about the cost at the unit of service level. It gave only aggregate costing information (i.e. information about the departmental or global costs) but it does not provide the costs at the patient or procedure level that is needed in order to push cost reduction and also price their services competitively...
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...4-14. Traditional vs. ABC The following cost information is available for Senkowski, Ltd.: Activity | Allocation Base | Volume of Activity | Overhead Cost | Purchasing | Purchase orders | 30,000 | $150,000 | Receiving | Shipments received | 15,000 | 60,000 | Machine setups | Setups | 2,500 | 200,000 | Quality control | Inspections | 18,000 | 90,000 | Direct materials are $15 per unit for luxury handbags and $11 per unit for deluxe handbags. There were 12,500 direct labor hours, each of which was charged to inventory at $18 per hour. Required A. Management is trying to decide between using the traditional allocation method based on direct labor hours and using activity-based costing. Calculate the overhead rates for each method. B. One particular batch of 40 luxury handbags had the following specifications: Direct labor hours | 8 | Purchase orders | 4 | Shipments received | 3 | Setups | 2 | Inspections | 12 | Calculate the overhead to be allocated to the bags under the traditional and activity-based costing techniques. C. Which costing method do you think is better for the company? Why? 4-14 (LO2, 3, and 4—Traditional versus ABC) A. Traditional allocation: The overhead rate based on direct labor hours is $40.00 per direct labor hour ($500,000 total overhead ÷ 12,500 direct labor hours). ABC allocation: The overhead rate for each activity is as follows: Purchasing: | $150,000 ÷ 30,000 = $5.00 per purchase order | ...
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...IDEAL CANDIDATES FOR ABC SYSTEMS Traditional (GAAP) costing methods are best suited to "situations with secure markets, large scale production with unchanging specifications, and little pressure for a highly flexible response to changing market demands". In the absence of any need for flexibility, its simplicity and the inexpensive collection of data make traditional costing methods ideal but this setting for a management accounting system, of which the costing system is a part, is becoming less common. For a firm to consider undertaking an ABC exercise or implementing an ABC system it is inferred that ABC information will overcome at least some of the limitations, or fill a void, of the existing system. Therefore, it is crucial to identify what limitations or void exists. The intent of introducing ABC methods must be to eliminate experienced (or anticipated) problems. Ideally traditional costing methods are used in an environment of stable markets and standard products that are made in bulk over lengthy periods. A requirement of flexibility in any form diminishes the relevance and reliability of information produced by traditional costing techniques. However, in the absence of any need for flexibility, their simplicity and the inexpensive collection of data make traditional costing methods preferable as minimal benefits from sophisticated costing methods would not match the higher cost. Activity-Based Costing provides the sophistication required to accurately...
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...company’s target profit, I have developed the following report. 1. Costing Method Evaluation Traditional Costing and Activity Based Costing (ABC) are the two systems we will evaluate in relation to Competition Bikes’ operations. To do so, we will need to look at the advantages and disadvantages of both systems. Costing systems are used to help predict the profitability of a product and help establish the cost of a product correlated to the income it generates. Traditional costing allocates overhead according to the amount of a particular cost driver, for example, how many direct labor hours are required to manufacture a product, while activity based costing looks at each activity and assigns a cost to it. Traditional costing separates costs into direct and indirect categories. The costs of labor or of raw materials would be examples of direct costs. Then, traditional costing divides the total cost of a product by the direct labor cost. This gives us the estimated cost of the product per item. However, increasingly in today’s business environment, the proportion of direct costs have fallen in relation to the proportion of indirect costs. This makes the traditional costing model less effective, especially when used in multi-product production setting, as is the case in Competition Bikes’ re-tooled Carbon Lite and Titanium frame production environment. Also, the traditional costing model does not look at causes of cost, which means this costing model it...
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...Tutorial 5 Q1 Describe the shortcomings of traditional approaches to overhead cost analysis. A traditional approach is a costing method that is used to allocate manufacturing costs to specific products. It uses single cost driver such as machine hours, direct labour hours to allocate indirect manufacturing costs. Traditional costing approaches can referred as the conventional method. However, there are many cost drivers in reality when factory overhead occurred, such as machines setups, or inspections. Since it missed out the others cost driver, it may fail to identify opportunities for cost efficiency, or allocate inaccurate per-unit cost, subsequently will results the managers unable to make a clear and strategic decision during costing. Nevertheless, traditional costing approaches also may not take into account consumer demand or unique features of product; it might reduce the improvements of the organization. Even though traditional approaches may easy to apply in each size of manufacturing business, yet it will become less reliable due to increased in the level of diversity of output rises and the level of complicated of manufacturing project. For example, if a business that has a lot of overhead expenses, it needs a more reliable and accurate costing approaches to identify or allocate the overhead costs to different products. If the costs and prices allocated incorrectly will causes the competitive position affected. Manufacturing environment has tried hard to find...
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