...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...
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...Brian F. Burke DMBA 620 Assignment 4: Activity Based Cost Accounting 09 October 2015 The cost-allocation system Holly has been using allocates 90% of overhead costs to the standard cello because 90% of direct labor hours were spent on the standard model. How much overhead was allocated to each of the two models last year? Based on the activity based costing calculations overall overhead allocations are 67% to the Standard Cello, 33% to the Custom Cello. Discuss why this might not be an accurate way to assign overhead costs to products. Holly has 7 categories of overhead for 2 products the lesser of which is 90% of their per unit production. The labor cost matches the production distribution but other categories do not. So when you calculate the per unit cost for each overhead category based on total production there are categories where the Custom Cello uses larger percentages for example building depreciation where the per unit cost is reversed. Measured in square footage used, only 25% of building depreciation is used by Custom Cello production. How would the use of more than one cost pool improve Holly's cost allocation? By using Activity Based Cost accounting individual costs for each category of overhead used to produce each product. Understanding this level of detail in cost allocation will allow for more nuanced changes in production or aspects of it to ensure profit and pricing at levels to cover costs but not overprice for the market. Calculate...
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...COMPARISON ON TRADITIONAL AND ACTIVITY-BASED ACCOUNTING SYSTEM TABLE OF CONTENT CHAPTER TITLE PAGE LIST OF TABLES i LIST OF FIGURES ii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 Understanding of Traditional and Activity-Based Costing System 1 1.2 Company Background 3 1.3 Company History 3 1.4 Company Operation 5 2. TRADITIONAL COSTING SYSTEM 8 3. ACTIVITY-BASED COSTING SYSTEM 9 4. COMPARISON BETWEEN TRADITIONAL AND ACTIVITY-BASED COSTING SYSTEM 11 5. CONCLUSION 12 REFERENCES 14 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1. Understanding of Traditional and Activity-Based Costing Systems The difference between traditional costing and Activity-based costing (ABC) systems helps companies determine the cost of a product related to the revenue it generates. The two common costing systems used in business are traditional costing and activity-based costing. Traditional costing assigns manufacturing overhead based on the volume of a cost driver, such as the amount of direct labor hours needed to produce an item. A cost driver is a factor that causes cost to incur, such as machine hours, direct labor hours and direct...
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...Accounting Information for Managers To Make Better Decisions 1 Abstract This paper analysis how the accounting information would support the decision making process. The main goal of an accounting system is to provide financial information about the organization including financial situation and the performance of the organization. The decision makers should know the situation of the organization either by comparing competitors or previous periods’ performance in order to achieve the objectives of the company and this being possible by using accounting information. In addition, this thesis studies the importance of having effective and efficient accounting system to make better decision as it relates to increase the profitability target of an organization. Organizations should replace their weak accounting system in order to ensure that each team member in the Accounts Department is conscious of their role to produce good accounting information (1, Okoli Margaret). The result of this paper describes that providing right information to the right people in time via management reporting to maximize the use of reports in decision-making. 2 Introduction Any organization should survive and excel in the fast paced and ever changing market. We are living in the digital era so information can be found everywhere via websites, databases documents, reports, and emails. However, it’s important to read the historical data-set during decision making process but providing report in quick...
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...2010-023X Factors Influencing Activity-Based Costing Success: A Research Framework Zhang Yi Fei and Che Ruhana Isa becoming more and more popular [3-7] ABC aims to provide accurate costing information to managers to allocate activity costs to products and services by applying cost drivers [8]. Academics who advocate ABC, such as, Cooper and Kaplan [9], and Swenson [10] argue that it provides more accurate cost data needed to make appropriate strategic decisions about product mix, sourcing, pricing, process improvement, and evaluation of business process performance. These claims have led many firms to adopt ABC systems [8]. The benefits of ABC and its positive impact on firm’s performance motivated a numerous studies which examined various aspects of ABC. Among such studies are McGowan [11] who assessed the integrity of ABC success, Innes and Mitchell [4, 12] and Yanren [13] who conducted research on factors affecting ABC adoption, and Shield [3], Shields and McEwen [14], Gosselin [15] and Baired et al.[16, 17]who concentrated on factors influencing ABC success especially at the implementation stage. However, there is mounting evidence that suggests most of firms are experiencing problems in implementing ABC and, in some extreme cases, ABC implementation is not successful [3], which later resulted in abandoning the ABC systems altogether [15]. Questions arise as to why ABC implementation is successful in certain companies and fails in others. Based on the contingency theory, researchers...
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...Introduction Managerial accounting is concerned with providing information to managers- that is, to those who are inside an organization and who direct and control its operations. Managerial accounting can be contrasted with financial accounting, which is concerned with providing information to stockholders, creditors and others who are outside an organization (Garrison and Noreen, 1999). Managerial accounting information includes: * Information on the costs of an organization’s products and services. For Example, managers can use product costs to guide the setting of selling prices. In addition, these product costs are used for inventory valuation and income determination (Horngren and Foster, pp. 2). * Budgets: A budget is a quantitative expression of a plan. * Performance reports: These reports often consist of comparisons of budgets with actual results. The deviations of actual results from budget are called variances (Horngren and Foster, pp. 3) * Other information which assist managers in their planning and control activities. Examples are information on revenues of an organization’s products and services, sales back logs, unit quantities and demands on capacity resources (Kaplan and Atkinson, pp. 1). Managerial Accounting Practices around the World Traditional managerial accounting systems are mainly designed to measure the efficiency of internal processes. In the 1980’s, traditional managerial accounting practitioners were heavily criticized...
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...Cost Accounting Tabitha Smith ACC 310 Christine Errico January 12, 2011 Cost Accounting What is cost accounting? Cost accounting as referred to as managerial accounting is a system of accounting used specifically by managers (Lanen, Anderson, & Maher, 2011, p. 6). Cost accounting measures, records and reports information about costs to help managers to form a well informed decisions for an organization (Lanen, Anderson, & Maher, 2011, p. 6). Cost accounting methods and their use, budgets including discipline, construction, and elements, and variance analysis are important aspects of cost accounting as a whole, which is an important tool for a successful organization. The main goal of cost accounting is to help managers to maximize value within their organization (Lanen, Anderson, & Maher, 2011, p. 3). One of the fundamental services of cost accounting is to provide information to the manager to guide them to make effective valuable decisions (Lanen, Anderson, & Maher, 2011, p. 3). An essential objective of cost accounting is to create an effective value chain (Lanen, Anderson, & Maher, 2011, p. 4). A value chain is a set of activities in which raw materials are converted into goods and services for consumers to purchase (Lanen, Anderson, & Maher, 2011, p. 4). An organization is responsible to coordinate with their vendors and suppliers along with their distributors and customers to accomplish their objective (Lanen, Anderson...
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...MBA Accounting for Managers Fall 2015 Course Syllabus Faculty Jasmine Hsu Faculty Contact Details jhsu@jgu.edu.in Class Time and Venue as per the programme time table Course Description The goal of this course is to help you understand the role and application of accounting information in business and learn how managers can use external and internal accounting information for decision-making. This course aims to provide an overview of key principles and concepts in financial accounting and managerial accounting. Specific topics include: components of financial statements; financial statements analysis; product costing; costvolume-profit analysis; and budgeting. Course Objectives After completion of the course, you should be able to: Understand the roles of financial accounting (external) and managerial accounting (internal) Analyze financial reports, specifically the balance sheet, statement of profit and loss and statement of cash flow. Identify and apply key financial ratios to financial statement analysis. Identify and apply basic elements of cost concepts, product costing and cost-volumeprofit (CVP) analysis to management decision-making process. Understand key considerations during the budgeting process and budgetary control. Course Materials Narayanswami (2014): “Financial Accounting: A Managerial Perspective”, Prentice-Hall Pvt Ltd., 5th edition, New Delhi (FA) Jiambalvo (2013):” Managerial Accounting”, Wiley India, 5th...
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...[pic] Managerial Accounting BA3201 |Puganeswary Thirumalai Naidu |307254805 |BABHM | |Tan Lian Ping |11001200428010 |BABHM | |Yasmin Lim Binti Mohd.Arifin |307147803 |BBA MKT | |Herry Abubakar Mshihiri |609687502 |BBA IB | Question1 | |Task 1 : Sales and Labour Budgets : University | | | | | | | | | |1 (a) | | | | | ...
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...|Name of Course |Managerial Accounting | |Course Code |EBF 2043 | |Credit hours |3 | |Prerequisite |Accounting | |Synopsis |The course introduces the vital role played by management accounting and the information provided by management accounting information | | |systems (MAIS) in a firm or an organisation. Management accounting is used for decision making, learning, planning and controlling | | |activities that are supporting operational and strategic needs. It also supports continuous learning and improvement activities and | | |serves as a linkage between strategy and execution of that strategy. | |Learning outcomes |At the end of this course, students are able to: | | |Compare and explain about...
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...1. Responsibility accounting in modern health care organization is a type of management accounting which collects and reports both planned and actual accounting information in terms of responsibility centers about the inputs and outputs of responsibility accounting. A growing trend in the structure of health care organizations is decentralization. Decentralization is the degree of dispersion of responsibility within a health care organization. In a decentralized organization, decision making is not confined to a few Top Executives but rather spread throughout the organization, with managers at various levels making key operating decisions within their sphere of responsibility. Health care organizations are divided into responsibility centers, organizational units in which a manager is responsible for operations and evaluates the unit's performance. For example, a nurse manager may be responsible for an inpatient pediatric unit, the manager for a home-care program is responsible for all home-care services that are delivered, and the manager of a housekeeping department is responsible for the cleanliness of the facility. Every program and department in a health care organization can be classified as a responsibility center. Responsibility accounting provides the information necessary to assist a manager in operating a responsibility center. Responsibility accounting is defined as the classification of financial and statistical data according to the organizational unit that produces...
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...179 International Journal of Collaborative Research on Internal Medicine & Public Health Specifics of the Activity-Based Applications in Hospital Management Boris Popesko * Tomas Bata University in Zlin, Czech Republic * Corresponding Author; Email: popesko@fame.utb.cz Abstract Paper analyses the specifics of the application of Activity-Based Costing method in hospital management. Primary objective of the paper is to outline the methodology of the ABC application in hospitals. First part of the paper analyzes the ways of ABC implementation in published foreign studies. Second part describes the individual steps in ABC application and discusses the differences in the application procedures between the manufacturing and hospital organization. Key words: Healthcare Management, Cost Management, Activity-based costing, Introduction In the last decade, many non-profit and hospital organizations started to face difficulties and challenges in balancing limited resources and costs to provide their demand for services. Due to the introduction of modern medical techniques and medicines and consequent increase of consumed costs, many hospitals are under pressure to adopt more advanced cost management techniques usually utilized only in profit organization sector. Hospital managers frequently seek the advanced techniques, for better understanding of relations between the cost and provided services. One of the key factors of effective company management is ability of accurate...
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...that in this large market, other competitors reduce their prices. The revenue and gross margin of pumps begin to fall down. 2. Problems and Issues. The problem in this company is that they still using the traditional volume-based cost accounting system. From the exhibit 3 and 4 and what Peggy said, we can find that the overhead cost is large, but some of them have no relationship with the production run or labor cost, for example, the set-up labor, materials handling and the machine costing. When the overhead cost is large, the traditional cost accounting system is inaccurate. And for this company, they manufacture different products; allocate the overhead cost by traditional cost accounting system will also cause imprecise accurate. 3. Recommendation. Because the company uses the traditional volume-based accounting costing system, they allocate too much overhead costing into their product costing. And also, manufacture several products will make the OH inaccurate. So the solution for this company is to use the Activity Based costing, this costing system can help to allocate the large overhead costing in a more correct way. So the company can decrease their product-run cost, to slip their prices. From the exhibit 5 and using the Activity Based costing, we can calculate the total cost of valves is $158900, the total cost of pumps is $353000, and the total cost of flow controllers is $355500. Using the new costing system can help...
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...10 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………………….11 3.0 Advantages and Disadvantages of Introducing ABC System ………………………………11 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………………………15 Recommendations ………………………………………………………………………………15 Appendix A - Elastic and Inelastic Demand ……………………………………………...........16 Appendix B - Summary of Variance Formulae …………………………………………...........17 Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………………….20 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This report discusses the different models and concepts which could affect Manac’s pricing decisions and what we should consider when pricing. It also pays attention to the current standard costing approach adopted by the company together with Variance Analysis and the roles it plays in management accounting and how variance analysis contribute to overall profit. In efforts to improve profit levels it was decided to switch to ABC System and special attention is paid to the advantages and disadvantages. 1.0 Introduction Manac plc, is a large company which manufactures and sells a range of standard electrical goods. It is a multinational company which has production and sales taking place across...
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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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