...Activity-based Costing Activity-based costing, is a system that follows a two-stage procedure to assign overhead costs to products. It identifies activities in a company and assigns the cost of each activity resource to all products and services according to the actual consumption by each. As revealed in the article, this costing method had both pros and cons. The article favored the advantages of the ABC method although the satisfaction scores were below the average for all tools used. For those companies that disfavored ABC method, the most common complain was that it took too much money and time using this method, and the method might not capture the complexity of their operations. In fact, ABC method is not production-specified. For production costs, standard costing was still “kill of the hill” with a usage rate of 42% according to the article. However, it is inaccurate to say that ABC method is increasingly being abandoned, only four out of 141 organizations previously used ABC but no longer use it according to the survey. In addition, the survey revealed that around sixteen percent companies considered ABC but chose not to implement it. The main concerns of managers of those companies regarding which cost-measurement system to choose were that they were not sure if it was a better way to allocate cost, if it accurately reflected how resources were used, if the information was timely, and if updating the system was difficult. Having said about the disadvantages and...
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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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...Mark Hamrick & Dakata Brodie 17 Nov 2013 Assignment 2.1 Summary of Time-Based Activity-Based Costing This article’s purpose is to explain the new version of Activity-Based Costing that uses approximations to determine time-driven Activity-Based Costing. Base on rate of technological growth and dealing with companies on larger scales, the traditional method of ABC is very cumbersome. The new time-driven activity-based costing is a much more effective technique. The article further went on to contrast the two methods of costing by showcasing traditional inefficiencies, demonstrating the ease of use for the new method, and applying real-time data to increase situational awareness. The inefficiencies of the traditional activity-based costing were the primary reasons for the new time-driven method. The article explains how the process was so cumbersome that Excel programs were not powerful enough to crunch all the numbers. Tracking information was overbearing and required dedicated teams more than a day to interpret the data. Ease of use was a primary concern for anyone to venture back to the new activity-based costing. By simply averaging the amounts and getting ballpark figures, teams could use formulas to effectively average the costs based on the average time to complete a job, not each individual task. This method didn’t require thousands of surveys to determine the cost-only estimates. This reduced the number of items tracked and provided relatively...
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...| | |Activity-Based Costing | |Product/Cost Relationships | | | | | | | | | 11/5/2007 Origin Activity Based Costing, or ABC for short, has been in use since the early 20th century. As the manufacturing industry became more complex, managers needed a way to keep a closer watch on manufacturing costs within the company. This in turn allowed them to more appropriately price their products, making them more competitive...
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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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...[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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...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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...Recently, Activity-based costing (ABC) is defined as a methodology that measures the cost and performance of activities, resources, and cost objects. Specifically, resources are assigned to activities, then activities are assigned to cost objects based on their use. ABC recognizes the causal relationships of cost drivers to activities (Institute of Management Accountants, 1998). In other words, the objective of activity-based costing is to understand the causes of overhead costs and to identify the real probability of products and customers. Moreover activity-based costing purpose is allocation of indirect costs based on causal activities. Meanwhile, there are three important characteristics of ABC: 1) Simple traditional distinction made between fixed cost and variable cost is not enough guide to provide quality information to design a cost system. 2) The more appropriate distinction between cost behavior patterns are volume related, diversity related, events (decisions) related and time related. 3) Cost drivers need to be identified. A cost driver is a structural determinant of cost related activity. The logic behind is that cost drivers dictate the cost behavior pattern. In tracing overhead cost to product, a cost behavior pattern must be understood so that appropriate cost driver could be identified. In addition, ABC have different structure ranges, such as multiple product, complex product, complex production system and significant variation in volume between high...
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...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, & Maher, 2011, p. 4). Thus, the cost accounting system gives the organization the tools to begin such coordination. To begin this process, research and development encompass activities from the production process and customer service (Lanen, Anderson, & Maher, 2011, p. 4). Managers gauge these activities to determine their contribution to the final product, service and...
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...ADMS 3510 Group Assignment: Markworth Products (MP) Fall 2014, Section A Group members Alamgir Khandwala, 212357109 Mohammed Islam 212540191 Sobia Ali, 210515062 Summaiya Haque, 211992948 Date of submission: 9th November 2014 To: Mr. John Adam, President From: Controller Subject: Cost System and Capital Budgeting Improvement Please find attached report for Markworth Products for recommendation regarding appropriate costing system as it grows as an organization and capital budget evaluation. Kind Regards, Controller Introduction and Relevant Facts Markworth Products (MP) is a new Canadian public company in the plastic packaging products industry. It develops technologically advanced machinery and moulds that give MP a competitive advantage over its competitors. John Adam has requested us to develop efficient costing system and improve capital budgeting process. Problems Major Problems: - MP does not have an efficient costing system in place to allocate the direct manufacturing costs and indirect manufacturing overhead costs for accurate prediction of product costs. - The current approach for capital budgeting to evaluate new equipment does not meet the current industrial standards of accepted NPV practices Minor Problems: - Holding inventory for clients free of charge - Potential market loss due to emphasis on reducing costs and value leadership - Above average profits due to competitive advantage last temporarily as competitors...
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...Managerial & Cost Accounting ACCT610 Activity-Based Management Made Possible By Activity-Based Costing Supervised by Professor Majboor Alnamri Prepared by: EMBA Student 1 KAAU - EMBA Overview • • • • • • Over/Under Costing Methods of Allocating Indirect Cost Refining a cost system Costs/Benefits of ABC ABC in service & retail Example from an Organization 2 KAAU - EMBA Over Costing & Under Costing Over Costing—a product consumes a low level of resources but is allocated high costs per unit. Under Costing—a product consumes a high level of resources but is allocated low costs per unit. KAAU - EMBA 3 KAAU - EMBA Activity-Based Costing Identifies activities required to produce the product or service Determines the cost of the activities Allocates costs to the cost object based on the object’s consumption of activities 4 KAAU - EMBA Methods of Allocating Indirect Cost Cause-and-effect Using this criterion, managers identify the variable or variables that cause resources to be consumed Benefits-received Using this criterion, managers identify the beneficiaries of the outputs of the cost object 5 KAAU - EMBA Methods of Allocating Indirect Cost Fairness or equity This criterion is often cited on government contracts when cost allocations are the basis for establishing a price satisfactory to the government and its suppliers. Ability to bear This criterion advocates allocating costs in proportion...
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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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...Kanthal Case Analysis Dr. Joseph Szendi Managerial Accounting 640 Yega Tita Company Background /History……………………………………............………2 Current System………………………………………………………………………..4 Dilemma ……………………………………………………………………………….4 Options/Solutions………………………………………………………………….….5 Analysis…………………………………………………………………………………6 Competitive Forces……………………………………………………………………6 Porters Five Forces …………………………………………………………………...7 SWOT Analysis………………………………………………………………………..8 Strengths ……………………………………………………………………………...8 Weaknesses…………………………………………………………………………..…8 Opportunities…………………………………………………………………………...8 Threats………………………………………………………………………………..…8 Recommendations/Conclusion………………………………………………………9 References……………………………………………………………………………...10 Company background: Sandvik Materials Technology, of which Kanthal is a brand, is a world-leading developer and manufacturer of products in advanced stainless steels and special alloys for the most demanding environments, as well as products and systems for industrial heating. Kanthal is the largest of the six divisions in Sweden. There are currently 7,300 employees. Kanthal specializes in production and sales of electrical resistance heating elements. Kanthal heating Technology supplies manufacturers of electrical appliances and heating systems with wire that generates heat through electric...
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...Towards a conceptual framework for strategic cost management - The concept, objectives, and instruments - Von der Fakultät für Wirtschaftswissenschaften der Technischen Universität Chemnitz genehmigte Dissertation zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades Doctor rerum politicarum (Dr. rer. pol.) vorgelegt von Ibrahim Abd El Mageed Ali El Kelety geboren am 11.01.1965 in El Menoufia - Ägypten eingereicht am: 14. Juni 2006 Gutachter: Prof. Dr. Uwe Götze Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Jürgen Bloech Prof. Dr. Peter Schuster Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 18. Juli 2006 Acknowledgement To the Almighty God “ALLAH” Who have granted me all these graces to fulfill this work and Who supported me in all my life. To Him I extend my heartfelt thanks. It is a pleasure to express my sincere and deepest heartfelt gratitude to my “Doktorvater“ Prof. Dr. Uwe Götze for his kind supervision, continuous encouragement, valuable enthusiastic discussion and unfailing advice throughout the present work, as well as financial support during my latest period of study in Germany. He assisted in all matters, provided solutions to different problems. Prof. Dr. Uwe Götze supported and helped me during my learning period in Germany and writing this thesis. I am very lucky being one of his students. I would like to express my deep thanks to Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Jürgen Bloech - Georg-August University of Göttingen - for his kind acceptance to act as an examiner. I would also like to express my sincere thanks to Prof. Dr. Peter...
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...TABLE OF CONTENT Executive Summary …………………………………………………………………...................2 1.0 Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………...3 2.1 Economic Theory ……………………………………………………………………………...3 2.2 Costs …………………………………………………………………………………………...5 2.3 Cost – plus Pricing …………………………………………………………………………….5 2.4 Production Mix Decision …………………………………………………………..................6 2.5 Target Costing …………………………………………………………………………………7 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………….................8 2.0 The Role of Standard Costing …………………………………………………….................8 3.6 The Role of Variable Analysis ………………………………………………………………...9 3.7 The Values and Limitations of Variance Analysis …………………………………………..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...
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