Ch 5 Activity Based Costing Flashcards

The costs of those activities become the building blocks for allocating the costs of products and services. Cost accounting is a form of managerial accounting that aims to capture a company’s total cost of production by assessing its variable and fixed costs. The ABC system of cost accounting is based on activities, which are considered any event, unit of work, or task with a specific goal. Activity Rate Method – This method involves computing an activity rate that is very similar to calculating a predetermined overhead rate, except that now we have an activity rate for each activity cost pool.

A) A peanut-butter costing system typically has more-homogeneous indirect cost pools. B) A peanut-butter costing system broadly averages or spreads the cost of resources uniformly to cost objects. C) A peanut-butter costing system assumes that all costs are variable. D) In a peanut-butter costing system, costs of activities are used to assign costs to other cost objects such as products or services based on the activities the products or services consume.

It refines a costing system by identifying individual activities as the dundamental cost objects. It can lead to undercosting or overcosting of products or services. It occurs when a product consumes a HIGH LEVEL of RESOURCES but is reported to have a LOW COST PER UNIT. What is termed as product overcosting? It occurs when a product consumes a LOW LEVEL of RESOURCES but is reported to have a HIGH COST PER UNIT What are the strategic consequences of an undercosted product?

Since there are a lot of steps and groundwork required to come out with a costing based on this system, it is quite a time to consume. Previously, there were less number of options for a product, but now there are a lot of variations in products due to colors, design, durability, weight, etc. This again calls for a refined costing system so that one can price the products accordingly. Activity based costing is also known as ABC costing, the ABC method, and the ABC costing method. The broad range of issues noted here should make it clear that ABC tends to follow a bumpy path in many organizations, with a tendency for its usefulness to decline over time.

C) Service companies find great value from ABC because a vast majority of their cost structure is composed of direct costs. D) ABC systems is valuable for pricing decisions but not for understanding, managing, and reducing costs in government institutions. As an activity-based costing example, consider Company ABC that has a $50,000 per year electricity bill. The number of labor hours has a direct impact on the electric bill. For the year, there were 2,500 labor hours worked, which in this example is the cost driver. Calculating the cost driver rate is done by dividing the $50,000 a year electric bill by the 2,500 hours, yielding a cost driver rate of $20. The cost driver rate, which is the cost pool total divided by cost driver, is used to calculate the amount of overhead and indirect costs related to a particular activity.

Direct Labor Vs Indirect Head Count

This is because absorption costing assigns all manufacturing costs to products, regardless of whether the product actually incurs those costs. The absorption costing method is generally accepted as the best way to allocate manufacturing costs to products, which is a falsehood. The popularity of absorption costings stems from the fact that it is easy to calculate and implement and meets GAAP regulatory requirements. Knowledge of costing, cost accounting, and costing terms such as cost drivers, allocation, cause and effect relation, etc., is a must. 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.

• For example, in a factory, the number of hours a machine runs determines how much electricity is used and how much will have to be spent on maintenance.
• B) All costs in a homogeneous cost pool have the same or a similar cause-and-effect relationship with the single cost driver that is used as the cost-allocation base for Johnson.
• In the field of accounting, activity-based costing and traditional costingare two different methods for allocating indirect costs to products.
• As manufacturing operations can become complex with many moving parts, dividing the total overhead cost pool by a single driver removes much complexity while sacrificing granularity and cause-effect relationships.
• C) Budgets are most useful when they are planned independent of the company’s strategic plans.
• Seriously distorted product costs can lead managers to choose a losing competitive strategy by de-emphasizing and overpricing highly profitable products and expanding commitments to complex, unprofitable lines.

B) The three guidelines for refining costing systems should be ignored while implementing an ABC costing system. C) The heterogeneous cost pools give managers greater confidence in the activity and product cost numbers from the ABC system. D) Identifying the cost-allocation bases defines the number of activity pools into which costs must be grouped in an ABC system. Johnson Superior Products Inc. produces hospital equipment and the setup requirements vary from product to product. Johnson produces its products based on customer orders and uses ABC costing. A) Johnson has clearly failed to identify as many direct costs as is economically feasible. B) All costs in a homogeneous cost pool have the same or a similar cause-and-effect relationship with the single cost driver that is used as the cost-allocation base for Johnson.

Activity

By doing this, under or over costing of particular products may occur. The Activity Based Costing method has always been debated as to its use and value within a particular organization.

Product or Customer activities – these are activities that relate to a specific product line or customer. Facility or Company-wide activities – these are activities that support the entire company. Products that a company is well-suited to make and sell show small profits while products for which a company is less suited show large profits.

In order to make a profit on their products, these companies must accurately determine how much it costs to manufacture each product. Operations staff have significant disagreements with the accounting staff about the costs of manufacturing and marketing products and services. Are resources sacrificed on activities that cannot be traced to individual products or services but support the organization as a whole.

By placing ABC into affect, an organization may have the ability to determine whether all of their clients are profitable or not. This way, organizations can “fire” unprofitable customers to increase their margins. As a result of the survey, Krumwiede was able to determine four factors that seemed to separate the users of ABC from the non-users. https://online-accounting.net/ Those factors include the potential of cost distortions, decision usefulness of cost information, lack of system initiatives, and the size of the organization (p.32). Our systems have detected unusual traffic activity from your network. Please complete this reCAPTCHA to demonstrate that it’s you making the requests and not a robot.

Many users commented that ABC is not the single answer to all of their needs, but it is one of many tools to be used in order to meet an organization’s long-term goals (p. 38). Commitment from upper-level management is necessary for any ABC system to survive and be successful.

Determine Facility Production Costs

Manufacturing overhead allocation can be a very controversial topic. Some people argue that it’s necessary to accurately track production costs, while others believe it leads to unfair cost allocations and ultimately hurts the manufacturing process. Traditional allocation assigns costs as period or product costs, and all product costs are included in the cost of inventory, which makes this method acceptable for generally overcosting a particular product may result in: accepted accounting principles . Under generally accepted accounting principles, manufacturers must allocate periodic production costs to all items produced. Inventory valuation systems divide these costs—labor, materials purchases, and factory overhead—between items sold and those still in stock. Broad averaging describes a costing system that uses direct costs to assign the cost of resources directly to cost objects.

Once ABC is implemented, it normally takes an even longer period before its conclusions are actually utilized in the decision-making process of the organization. Time seemed to be the most important factor in the study for differentiating usage and non-usage companies. Cost distortions have the ability to affect many important decisions, including those related to profitability analyses.

The Use Of A Single Indirect

All manufacturing costs are considered to be part of the product cost. In contrast, nonmanufacturing costs are not considered production costs and are not assigned to products, regardless of whether the costs are based on the products.

C) Activity based costing broadly averages or spreads the cost of resources uniformly to cost objects such as products or services. D) The main advantage of activity-based costing over peanut-butter costing is the accurate distribution of all direct costs to the products. Which of the following is a sign that an ABC system may be useful for an organization? A) Significant amounts of indirect costs are allocated using multiple cost pools. B) Products make similar demands on resources because of similarities in volume, process steps, batch size, or complexity. C) Many indirect costs are described as batch-level costs, product-sustaining costs, or facility-sustaining costs.

• Shifting the focus from products to activities highlights the existence of non-value-add, or NVA, activity.
• Time seemed to be the most important factor in the study for differentiating usage and non-usage companies.
• A common example of a significant distortion risk is if an organization were to use only one overhead base.
• Costs in this pool are allocated using number of customer orders for the easiness of costing operations.
• D) Chances of product-cost cross-subsidization are higher in activity-based costing compared to traditional costing systems.

The activity-based costing method results in allocation of $15,120 of overhead to Widget A and $11,880 of overhead to Widget B. The traditional costing method results in allocation of $11,250 of overhead to Widget A and $15,750 of overhead to Widget B. Undercosting” occurs when a product consumes a high level of resources but is allocated low costs per unit. Overcosting” occurs when a product consumes a low level of resources but is allocated high costs/unit. Not surprisingly, the higher prices make the manufacturer less competitive, causing sales to drop to $8 million. The exact high overhead costs over a small base increase the starting bid price again, resulting in even less competitive estimates.

Learn the details of traditions vs activity-based costing, and the formula demonstrated in a set of examples. On the other hand, activity-based Costing can be challenging to implement, requiring expertise and investment in software and training. It may not be as useful to companies whose overhead costs are primarily volume-related or companies whose overhead represents a small proportion of their overall costs. There only real benefits to using absorption costing are that they are GAAP compliant and easy to calculate. As manufacturing operations can become complex with many moving parts, dividing the total overhead cost pool by a single driver removes much complexity while sacrificing granularity and cause-effect relationships. Therefore, a company’s overhead allocation scheme may not correspond to the underlying production process or the demands of individual products on the enterprise’s resources. While absorption costing meets compliance requirements, it is essential to note that this method does not always give an accurate picture of the profitability of individual products.

Avoidance Of Slack Time Reporting

Another disadvantage of absorption costing is that it can lead to sub-optimal decision-making. This is because absorption costing focuses on the short-term goal of reducing unit costs rather than on the long-term goal of maximizing profitability. This can lead to decisions that may be beneficial in the short term but harmful in the long term. Because of heavy competition, every business is looking out to streamline its cost structure and manufacture products that suit its manufacturing and organizational setup. The products which are victims of over costing automatically allow another product’s under costing and vice versa. ABC costing can help eradicate the problem if implementing an activity-based costing system is appropriate.

When absorption costing is used to allocate costs to production with a single driver, the costing product will inevitably be incorrect. Although absorption costing is perfectly GAAP compliant, it produces skewed results when assessing true product costing for decision-making purposes. Another criticism of absorption costing is that it can lead to the under-costing of products. This can happen when there are many direct costs, and these costs are allocated to products that do not reflect the actual cost of manufacturing the product. Traditional standard cost systems in manufacturing companies are designed not to measure product costs accurately but to value inventory. The standard costs usually bear no relation to the resources consumed to design, produce, market, and deliver the product. If a company does not operate in such an environment, then it may spend a great deal of money on an ABC installation, only to find that the resulting information is not overly valuable.

A costing system that starts with output completed and then assigns manufacturing costs to units sold and to inventories. Using activity-based cost information to make decisions that increase profits while satisfying customers’ needs. An activity is a cost driver, such as purchase orders or machine setups. Products make diverse demands on resources because of differences in volume, process steps, batch size, or complexity. All or most costs are identified as output unit-level costs (unlikely to be true!). Indirect-cost pools -Expand the number of cost pools until each of these pools is homogeneous. Traditional allocation bases might apply branch overhead to accounts based on account balances or equal amounts per account.

Absorption costing, meanwhile, is easier to implement yet recognized as perfectly compliant with generally accepted accounting principles and IRS reporting requirements. The downside, however, is that it may offer less insight to those charged with making strategic decisions regarding production practices and costs. The absorption costing method is the traditional approach to manufacturing accounting. While it has its advantages, there are also several significant disadvantages to using this method. All manufacturing costs are classified as material, labor, or overhead and assigned to products regardless of whether they drive or are driven by production.

Even if ABC will reduce product cost distortions substantially, it would probably not be implemented unless the company could use the better cost information in its decision-making processes. Companies that sell products dictated by market rates will most likely find little use for ABC because they have little control over the prices they can charge. On the other hand, ABC could be an extremely useful tool for a company selling multiple products within a highly competitive pricing industry.

How To Calculate The Predetermined Overhead Application Rate For Absorption Costing Purposes

B) Activity-based costing is more likely to result in major differences from traditional costing systems if the firm manufactures only one product rather than multiple products. C) The focus is on activities that account for a sizable fraction of indirect costs . D) Chances of product-cost cross-subsidization are higher in activity-based costing compared to traditional costing systems.

Increase In Indirect Costs

Such costs can include research and development, advertising, procurement, and distribution. Similarly, you might consider creating cost pools for each distribution channel, or for each facility. If production batches are of greatly varying lengths, then consider creating cost pools at the batch level, so that you can adequately assign costs based on batch size. First, it expands the number of cost pools that can be used to assemble overhead costs. Instead of accumulating all costs in one company-wide pool, it pools costs by activity. Under the ABC system, an activity can also be considered as any transaction or event that is a cost driver. A cost driver, also known as an activity driver, is used to refer to an allocation base.