Q1. Discuss with suitable examples why activity-based costing (ABC) is better than the traditional costing system. Provide a suitable numerical example of ABC in the manufacturing sector and show all the necessary calculations required under the ABC system.
Cost Management
Measuring, Monitoring, and Motivating Performance
Chapter 7
Activity-Based Costing and
Management
© John Wiley & Sons, 2011
Chapter 7: Activity-Based Costing and Management
Eldenburg & Wolcott’s Cost Management, 2e
Slide # 1
Chapter 7: Activity-Based Costing and
Management
Learning objectives
•
Q1: What is activity-based costing (ABC)?
•
Q2: What are activities and how are they identified?
•
Q3: What process is used to assign costs in an ABC system?
•
Q4: What is activity-based management?
•
Q5: What are GPK and RCA?
•
Q6: How does information from ABC, GPK, and RCA affect
managers’ incentives and decisions?
© John Wiley & Sons, 2011
Chapter 7: Activity-Based Costing and Management
Eldenburg & Wolcott’s Cost Management, 2e
Slide # 2
Q1: Activity-Based Costing (ABC)
• ABC is a method of cost system refinement.
• Indirect costs are divided into “sub-pools” of
costs of activities.
• Activity costs are then allocated to the final cost
objects using a cost allocation base (more
commonly called cost drivers in ABC).
• Activities are measurable, making it more likely
that cost drivers can be found so that a final cost
object will absorb indirect costs in proportion to
its use of the activity.
© John Wiley & Sons, 2011
Chapter 7: Activity-Based Costing and Management
Eldenburg & Wolcott’s Cost Management, 2e
Slide # 3
Q1: Traditional Costing vs. ABC
Traditional costing systems:
Indirect
Costs
Indirect costs are
grouped into one (or a
small number) of cost
pools; a cost allocation
base assigns costs to
the individual products
© John Wiley & Sons, 2011
Product A
Direct Costs
Product B
Direct Costs
Product C
Direct Costs
The individual
products are
the final cost
objects.
Direct costs are
traced to the
individual
products.
Chapter 7: Activity-Based Costing and Management
Eldenburg & Wolcott’s Cost Management, 2e
Slide # 4
Q1: Traditional Costing Systems
© John Wiley & Sons, 2011
Chapter 7: Activity-Based Costing and Management
Eldenburg & Wolcott’s Cost Management, 2e
Slide # 5
Q1: Traditional Costing vs. ABC
Activity-based costing systems:
Activity 1
Indirect
Costs
Activity 2
Activity 3
Indirect costs are
assigned (traced &
allocated) to various
pools of activity costs.
© John Wiley & Sons, 2011
Product A
Direct Costs
Product B
Direct Costs
Product C
Direct Costs
Activity costs are
allocated to
products
Chapter 7: Activity-Based Costing and Management
Eldenburg & Wolcott’s Cost Management, 2e
The individual products
are the final cost objects
& direct costs are traced
to the individual products.
Slide # 6
Q1: ABC Costing Systems
© John Wiley & Sons, 2011
Chapter 7: Activity-Based Costing and Management
Eldenburg & Wolcott’s Cost Management, 2e
Slide # 7
Q2: What are Activities and How are They
Identified?
The ABC cost hierarchy includes the following activities:
• organization-sustaining – associated with overall
organization
• facility-sustaining – associated with single manufacturing
plant or service facility
• customer-sustaining – associated with a single customer
• product-sustaining – associated with product lien or
single product
• batch-level – associated with each batch of product
• unit-level – associated with each unit produced
© John Wiley & Sons, 2011
Chapter 7: Activity-Based Costing and Management
Eldenburg & Wolcott’s Cost Management, 2e
Slide # 8
Q2: ABC Cost Hierarchy Example
Some of the costs incurred by the Dewey Chargem law firm are listed
below. This firm specializes in immigration issues and family law. For each
cost, identify whether the cost most likely relates to a(n) (1) organiz-ationsustaining, (2) facility-sustaining, (3) customer-sustaining, (4) productsustaining, (5) batch-level, or (6) unit-level activity and explain your choice.
Cost
Cost Hierarchy Level
Bookkeeping software
Salary for partner in charge of family law
Office supplies
Subscription to family law update journal
Telephone charges for local calls
Long distance telephone charges
Window washing service
Salary of receptionist
© John Wiley & Sons, 2011
Chapter 7: Activity-Based Costing and Management
Eldenburg & Wolcott’s Cost Management, 2e
Slide # 9
Q3: What Process is Used to Assign Costs in an
ABC system?
1. Identify the relevant cost object.
2. Identify activities and group homogeneous
activities.
3. Assign costs to the activity cost pools.
4. Choose a cost driver for each activity cost
pool.
5. Calculate an allocation rate for each
activity cost pool.
6. Allocate activity costs to the final cost
object.
© John Wiley & Sons, 2011
Chapter 7: Activity-Based Costing and Management
Eldenburg & Wolcott’s Cost Management, 2e
Slide # 10
Q3: How Are Cost Drivers Selected for
Activities?
• For each activity, determine its place
in the ABC cost hierarchy.
• Look for drivers that have a good
cause-and-effect relationship with the
activities’ costs.
• Use a reasonable driver when there is
no cause-and-effect relationship.
© John Wiley & Sons, 2011
Chapter 7: Activity-Based Costing and Management
Eldenburg & Wolcott’s Cost Management, 2e
Slide # 11
Q3: ABC in Manufacturing Example
Alphabet Co. makes products A & B. Product A is a low-volume
specialty item and B is a high-volume item. Estimated factory- wide
overhead is $800,000, and the number of DL hours for the year is
estimated to be 50,000 hours. DL costs are $10/hour. Each product
uses 2 DL hours. Compute the traditional cost of each product if
Products A & B use $25 and $10 in direct materials, respectively.
First, compute the estimated overhead rate:
Estimated overhead rate = $800,000/50,000 hours = $16/hour.
Direct materials
Direct labor (2hrs @ $10)
Overhead (2 hrs @ $16)
© John Wiley & Sons, 2011
Product A
$25
20
32
$77
Chapter 7: Activity-Based Costing and Management
Eldenburg & Wolcott’s Cost Management, 2e
Product B
$10
20
32
$62
Slide # 12
Q3: ABC in Manufacturing Example
Alphabet Co. is implementing an ABC system. It estimated the costs
and activity levels for the upcoming year shown below.
Estimated Estimated Activity Levels
Costs
Prod. A Prod. B
Total
Machine set-ups
$200,000 3,000 2,000 5,000
Inspections
140,000
500
300
800
Materials handling
80,000
400
400
800
Machining dep’t
320,000 12,000 28,000 40,000
Quality control dep’t
60,000
600
150
750
$800,000
Cost Driver
# set-ups
# inspections
# mat’l requistions
# machine hours
# tests
First, compute the estimated overhead rate for each activity:
© John Wiley & Sons, 2011
Chapter 7: Activity-Based Costing and Management
Eldenburg & Wolcott’s Cost Management, 2e
Slide # 13
Q3: ABC in Manufacturing Example
Estimated
Costs
Estimated Activity
Overhead Rate
$40
Machine set-ups
$200,000 5,000 set-ups
$40/setup
/setup
$175
Inspections
140,000
800 inspections
$175/inspection
/inspection
Materials handling
80,000
800 mat’l requistions $100
$100/requisition
/requisition
$8
Machining dep’t
320,000 40,000 machine hours
$8/mach
/machhrhr
$80
Quality control dep’t
60,000
750 tests
$80/test
/test
$800,000
© John Wiley & Sons, 2011
Chapter 7: Activity-Based Costing and Management
Eldenburg & Wolcott’s Cost Management, 2e
Slide # 14
Q3: ABC in Manufacturing Example
Alphabet recently completed a batch of 100 As and a batch of 100 Bs.
Direct material and labor costs were as budgeted. Information about each
batch’s use of the cost drivers is given below. Compute the overhead
allocated to each unit of A and B.
100 As 100 Bs
Machine set-ups
60
10
Inspections
10
2
Overhead allocated: 100 As 100 Bs
Materials handling
4
2
Machine set-ups
$2,400 $400
Machining dep’t
240
120
Inspections
1,750
350
Quality control dep’t
3
1
Materials handling
400
200
Machining dep’t
1,920
960
Quality control dep’t
240
80
Overhead for batch $6,710 $1,990
Overhead per unit
© John Wiley & Sons, 2011
Chapter 7: Activity-Based Costing and Management
Eldenburg & Wolcott’s Cost Management, 2e
$67.10 $19.90
Slide # 15
Q3: ABC in Manufacturing Example
Compute the total cost of each product and compare it to the costs
computed under traditional costing.
Prod A Prod B
Direct material $25.00 $10.00
Direct labor
20.00 20.00
Overhead
67.10 19.90
$112.10 $49.90
Total
Traditional costing
assigned $77 to a unit of
Product A and $62 to a
unit of Product B.
•
The only difference between the two costing systems is that
Product A is assigned more overhead costs under ABC.
•
The additional overhead assigned to Product A reflects Product
A’s consumption of resources.
© John Wiley & Sons, 2011
Chapter 7: Activity-Based Costing and Management
Eldenburg & Wolcott’s Cost Management, 2e
Slide # 16
Q4: Activity-Based Management (ABM)
• ABM is the process of using ABC information to
evaluate opportunities for improvements in an
organization.
• Examples include managing & monitoring
• customer profitability
• product and process design
• environmental costs
• quality
• constrained resources
© John Wiley & Sons, 2011
Chapter 7: Activity-Based Costing and Management
Eldenburg & Wolcott’s Cost Management, 2e
Slide # 17
Q4: ABM & Customer Profitability
• Activities can be defined so that different costs of
servicing customers are accumulated.
• Examples include
• analyzing the types of bank transactions used
by various categories of customers
• comparing the costs of servicing insurance
contracts sold to married versus single
individuals
• comparing the costs of different distribution
channels
© John Wiley & Sons, 2011
Chapter 7: Activity-Based Costing and Management
Eldenburg & Wolcott’s Cost Management, 2e
Slide # 18
Q4: ABM & Product/Process Improvements
• Activities can be defined so that the costs of stages
of production or of a business process are
accumulated.
• Examples include
• determining the costs of non-value-added
activities so the most costly can be reduced or
eliminated
• changing the steps in the accounts payable
function to reduce the number of personnel
• determining the most costly stages of product
development so that the time to market is
reduced
© John Wiley & Sons, 2011
Chapter 7: Activity-Based Costing and Management
Eldenburg & Wolcott’s Cost Management, 2e
Slide # 19
Q4: ABM & Environmental Costs
• Activities can be defined so that types of
environmental costs are accumulated.
• Examples include
• capturing the costs of contingent liabilities for
waste disposal site remediation
• comparing the cost of recycling packaging to the
cost of disposal
• computing the costs of treating different kinds of
emissions
© John Wiley & Sons, 2011
Chapter 7: Activity-Based Costing and Management
Eldenburg & Wolcott’s Cost Management, 2e
Slide # 20
Q4: ABM & Quality Costs
• Activities can be defined so that categories of costs
of managing quality are accumulated.
• Common categories of quality costs are
• costs of prevention activities
• costs of appraisal activities
• costs of production activities
• costs of postsales activities
© John Wiley & Sons, 2011
Chapter 7: Activity-Based Costing and Management
Eldenburg & Wolcott’s Cost Management, 2e
Slide # 21
Q5: What are GPK and RCA?
• Costing approaches similar to ABC because they
involve multiple pools and multiple drivers
• GPK can be described as marginal planning and
cost accounting
– Each cost is traced to a cost center (smaller than a
department) which performs a single repetitive activity,
and is the responsibility of one manager)
– Output measures tracks the volume of resource use
– Costs are segregated into proportional (change with
volume in resource use) and fixed
– Practical capacity is used for estimated allocation rate
volumes
© John Wiley & Sons, 2011
Chapter 7: Activity-Based Costing and Management
Eldenburg & Wolcott’s Cost Management, 2e
Slide # 22
Q5: Capacity Definitions
• Theoretical capacity – maximum assuming
continuous, uninterrupted operations 365 days/year
• Practical capacity – typical operating conditions
• Budgeted capacity – expected volume for the
upcoming time period
• Idle/excess capacity – difference between activity
capacity used and one of the above measures of
capacity
© John Wiley & Sons, 2011
Chapter 7: Activity-Based Costing and Management
Eldenburg & Wolcott’s Cost Management, 2e
Slide # 23
Q5: What are GPK and RCA?
• Resource Consumption Accounting (RCA)
• Builds on GPK and ABC principles
• Each cost is assigned to a resource cost pool
– Labor and machinery are often placed in different cost
pools since they are different types of resources
– RCA involves a significantly larger number of cost pools
than traditional accounting
– Like GPK, segregates proportional and fixed costs
– Utilizes theoretical rather than practical capacity for
allocating fixed costs
• More likely to focus manager attention on reducing idle and nonproductive resource time
© John Wiley & Sons, 2011
Chapter 7: Activity-Based Costing and Management
Eldenburg & Wolcott’s Cost Management, 2e
Slide # 24
Q5: Benefits/Drawbacks to GPK/RCA
• Benefits
– Generates multi-level internal income statements useful
for short terms decisions because it focuses on marginal
cost
– Increases cause & effect awareness among managers
– Categorizes costs (and generates profit margin) at the
product, product group, division, and company level
– Avoids arbitrary allocations of fixed costs
• Drawbacks
– Can be costly to implement
– Can result in a large number of variances to analyze
© John Wiley & Sons, 2011
Chapter 7: Activity-Based Costing and Management
Eldenburg & Wolcott’s Cost Management, 2e
Slide # 25
Q5: Comparison of ABC, GPK, and RCA
ABC
GPK
RCA
Character of cost
accounting system
Full costing
Marginal costing
Full and marginal
costing
Location of data
Database separate
from general ledger
Comprehensive
accounting system
Comprehensive
accounting system
Primary decision
relevance
Mid- to long-term
Short-term
Short-, Mid-, and
Long term
Allocation of
overhead based on
Activities
Cost Centers
Resources and/or
activities
Cost Drivers
Activity –Based
Resource Output
related
Resource output or
activity related
Fixed cost
allocation rate
denominator
Actual, budgeted,
or practical
capacity
Budgeted or
practical capacity
Theoretical
capacity
© John Wiley & Sons, 2011
Chapter 7: Activity-Based Costing and Management
Eldenburg & Wolcott’s Cost Management, 2e
Slide # 26
Q6: Decision Making with ABC, GPK, and RCA
• Benefits
• more accurate and relevant product cost information
• employees focus attention on activities
• measurement of the costs of activities and business
processes
• identify non-value-added activities and reduce costs
• Costs
• systems can be difficult to design and maintain
• more information must be captured
• decision makers may not use the information
appropriately
© John Wiley & Sons, 2011
Chapter 7: Activity-Based Costing and Management
Eldenburg & Wolcott’s Cost Management, 2e
Slide # 27
Q6: Uncertainties in ABC and ABM Implementation
• Judgment is required when determining
activities.
• Judgment is required when selecting cost
drivers.
• Denominator levels for cost drivers are
estimates.
• ABC information includes unitized fixed
costs, so decision makers must use ABC
information correctly.
© John Wiley & Sons, 2011
Chapter 7: Activity-Based Costing and Management
Eldenburg & Wolcott’s Cost Management, 2e
Slide # 28
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