term paper on activity based costing

Journal of Materials Chemistry A

Superb energy density of pbhfo3-based antiferroelectric ceramics via regulating the antiferroelectric-ferroelectric transition energy barrier.

Antiferroelectric (AFE) ceramics are excellent candidates for developing capacitors with enhanced energy storage capabilities due to their unique field-induced phase transitions. Research showed that AFE materials with large energy barriers typically exhibit better AFE stability. However, the higher intrinsic potential barriers make it difficult for the polar phase to cross the barrier after the electric field is removed, significantly reducing the maximum polarization (Pmax). Herein, we propose a universal approach to regulating the AFE-FE transition energy barrier in PbHfO3-based ceramics to markedly enhance capacitive performance. By precisely tuning the position of the AFE and FE states in the energy paths, we achieve a large phase-switching field (~ 509 kV cm-1) and a high Pmax (~ 47.07 μC cm-2), accompanied by an ultrahigh recoverable energy storage density (~16.05 J cm-3). In terms of practical applications, the ceramics display commendable frequency and cycling stability, as well as a rapid discharge time of 106 ns and a high-power density of 193.5 MW cm-3. This work presents an innovative strategy for synergistically enhancing the energy storage performance of antiferroelectric ceramics, potentially advancing the development of advanced dielectric capacitors.

  • This article is part of the themed collection: Journal of Materials Chemistry A HOT Papers

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term paper on activity based costing

J. Hu, Z. Zheng, T. Zhang, L. Lv, Z. Zhou, J. Liu, P. Li, Y. Cao, J. Guo and Z. Pan, J. Mater. Chem. A , 2024, Accepted Manuscript , DOI: 10.1039/D4TA04971C

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What Is Activity-Based Costing (ABC)?

How activity-based costing (abc) works, requirements for activity-based costing (abc), benefits of activity-based costing (abc), what are the five levels of activity in abc costing, what does activity-based costing seek to identify, how do you calculate abc costing, the bottom line.

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Activity-Based Costing (ABC): Method and Advantages Defined with Example

term paper on activity based costing

Activity-based costing (ABC) is a costing method that assigns overhead and indirect costs to related products and services. This cost accounting method recognizes the relationship between costs, overhead activities, and manufactured products, assigning indirect costs to products less arbitrarily than traditional costing methods. However, some indirect costs—such as management and office staff salaries—are difficult to assign to a product.

Key Takeaways

  • Activity-based costing (ABC) is a method of assigning overhead and indirect costs—such as salaries and utilities—to products and services. 
  • This system of cost accounting is based on "activities"; an activity is any event, unit of work, or task with a specific goal.
  • All activities are cost drivers: Purchase orders and machine setups are examples of activities. 
  • The cost driver rate, which is the cost pool total divided by the cost driver total, is used to calculate the amount of overhead and indirect costs related to a particular activity. 
  • ABC is used to get a better grasp on costs, allowing companies to form a more appropriate pricing strategy. 

Investopedia / Theresa Chiechi

Activity-based costing (ABC) is mostly used in the manufacturing industry. It enhances the reliability of cost data, hence producing nearly true costs and better classifying the costs incurred by the company during its production process.

This costing system is used in target costing, product costing, product line profitability analysis, customer profitability analysis, and service pricing. Activity-based costing is used to get a better grasp on costs, allowing companies to form a more appropriate pricing strategy. 

The formula for activity-based costing is the cost pool total divided by the cost driver, which yields the cost driver rate. The cost driver rate is used in activity-based costing to calculate the amount of overhead and indirect costs related to a particular activity. 

The ABC calculation is as follows:  

  • Identify all the activities required to create the product. 
  • Divide the activities into cost pools, which include all the individual costs related to an activity. Calculate the total overhead of each cost pool.
  • Assign each cost pool activity cost drivers, such as hours or units.
  • Calculate the cost driver rate by dividing the total overhead in each cost pool by the total cost drivers.
  • Multiply the cost driver rate by the number of cost drivers. 

As an activity-based costing example, consider Company ABC, which 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; in this example, this 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. For Product XYZ, the company uses electricity for 10 hours. The overhead costs for the product are $200, or $20 times 10.

Activity-based costing benefits the costing process by expanding the number of cost pools that can be used to analyze overhead costs and by making indirect costs traceable to certain activities. 

The ABC system of cost accounting is based on activities, which are any events, units of work, or tasks with a specific goal—such as setting up machines for production, designing products, distributing finished goods, or operating machines. Activities consume overhead resources and are considered cost objects.

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. Examples of cost drivers include machine setups, maintenance requests, consumed power, purchase orders, quality inspections, or production orders.

There are two categories of activity measures: transaction drivers, which involve counting how many times an activity occurs, and duration drivers, which measure how long an activity takes to complete.

Unlike traditional cost measurement systems that depend on volume count, such as machine hours and/or direct labor hours, to allocate indirect or overhead costs to products, the ABC system classifies five broad levels of activity that are, to a certain extent, unrelated to how many units are produced. These levels include batch-level activity , unit-level activity, customer-level activity, organization-sustaining activity, and product-level activity.

Activity-based costing (ABC) enhances the costing process in three ways. 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. 

Second, it creates new bases for assigning overhead costs to items, so costs are allocated based on the activities that generate costs, instead of on volume measures—such as machine hours or direct labor costs. 

Finally, ABC alters the nature of several indirect costs, making costs previously considered indirect—such as depreciation , utilities, or salaries—traceable to certain activities. Alternatively, ABC transfers overhead costs from high-volume products to low-volume products, raising the unit cost of low-volume products.

There are five levels of activity in ABC costing: unit-level activities, batch-level activities, product-level activities, customer-level activities, and organization-sustaining activities. Unit-level activities are performed each time a unit is produced. (For example, providing power for a piece of equipment is a unit-level cost.) Batch-level activities are performed each time a batch is processed, regardless of the number of units in the batch. Coordinating shipments to customers is an example of a batch-level activity.

Product-level activities are related to specific products; product-level activities must be carried out regardless of how many units of product are made and sold. (For example, designing a product is a product-level activity.) Customer-level activities relate to specific customers. An example of a customer-level activity is general technical product support. The final level of activity, organization-sustaining activity, refers to activities that must be completed regardless of the products being produced, how many batches are run, or how many units are made.

The goal of ABC costing is to optimize business activities and processes to enhance efficiency and reduce costs. It seeks to identify the highest cost drivers: the activities and processes that consume the most of a company's resources.

ABC costing is calculated by finding the total cost pool and dividing it by the cost driver. The cost pool is an aggregate of all the costs associated with performing a particular business task, such as making a particular product. Cost drivers are labor hours, machine hours, and customer contacts.

Activity-based costing (ABC) is a costing method that directly ties all overhead and indirect costs to specific products and services.

Activity-based costing recognizes the relationships between costs, overhead activities (all events, tasks, or units of work with a specific purpose), and manufactured products. The goal of activity-based costing is to understand a company's true costs and reduce inefficiencies by identifying the highest cost drivers: the activities and processes that consume most of a company's resources.

Chartered Global Management Accountant. " Activity-Based Costing (ABC) ."

term paper on activity based costing

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Research Review on Activity-Based Costing System (ABC): ABC's Development, Applications, Challenges, and Benefits

21 Pages Posted: 29 Mar 2019

Merlita Durana

First Asia Institute of Technology and Humanities

Date Written: February 14, 2019

Management accounting continues to be useful for business, and one of its tools is Activity-Based Costing (ABC). This paper is a thematic research review on the ABC System, its development, applications, challenges, and benefits. Several researchers claim that ABC is efficient in product pricing, cost-cutting strategy, and customer and profitability analysis. Meanwhile, Time-Driven ABC was introduced with the advantages of firm-wide application and lower costs. Several academicians argue that TDABC can be useful in the simulation of the optimal resource allocation, benchmarking, Balanced Scorecard and Total Quality Management. For both American and British companies, researchers attributed a highly significant correlation between overall ABC success and the purpose ‘Activity Performance Measurement and Improvement.’ According to practitioners, ABC adoption has an important consequence, i.e. it reinstated the relevance of management accounting. However, based on adoption rates in the U.K. and the U.S.A., few companies adopt ABC. Challenges faced by companies in the implementation are the possible reasons. Researchers cited the huge costs and technical complexity as the system’s predominant challenges. This paper synthesized the researchers’ conclusions into two unifying hypotheses on factors correlated to ABC adoption and success.

Keywords: Activity-Based Costing, Time-Driven ABC, Management Accounting, ABC adoption, success

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Merlita Durana (Contact Author)

First asia institute of technology and humanities ( email ).

President Laurel Highway, Tanauan City Tanauan City, Batangas 4217 Philippines 9772181852 (Phone) 0437784136 (Fax)

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College Term Paper

🖋 best way to write a great college term paper, managerial accounting for apple inc. activity based costing – term paper.

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Managerial Accounting for Apple Inc. Activity Based Costing

Activity based costing is given costs to products and services depending on the activities that the production uses and the resources that are utilised by these activities. It helps in determining the exact costs of the products or services. Apple Inc. uses the activity-based costing method to value its products.

The method of activity based costing method that Apple Company uses is activity based management. ABC provides the management with the necessary information that it uses for its decision making and planning. The control Apple uses the ABC approach to making decisions about it final pricing of it products. Also, the management can add or delete information from the product portfolio. The activity also helps the company to choose the best line of production that different products can use. The management of Apple Company uses the operation to identify the main steps in the manufacturing process. It then classifies all the in groups depending on the hierarchy of their costs. The next step is the finding the total sum of all the costs. Then, the management calculates the values of costs drivers and activity rate that are applicable. Lastly, the cost of each activity is applied to the final product. (Jameson, 2000)

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This type of costing method is appropriate because it increases the manufacturing overhead costs and limits their correlation with the direct labour inputs and machine working hours. It also helps diversify the products and customers tastes. Lastly, it helps control the rate of production of different products. For instance, some products are produced in significant quantities while others in small amount depending on the activities and resources involved.

This method makes it easy to analyse data. The company is Apple to monitor all the costs of its operations from the beginning of the production process to the time the product reaches the final customer. Also, it can give a clear indication of the customer reactions to the costing system the company uses.

Jameson, J. (2000). U.S. Patent No. 6,032,123 . Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

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What is Activity-Based Costing?

Labor hours vs. activity-based approach, unit cost card using labor approach, activity-based approach to determine overhead, unit cost card using activity-based approach, download the activity-based costing template, benefits of activity-based costing, additional resources, activity-based costing.

Allocating overhead costs based on “activities” that actually contribute to overhead costs

Activity-based costing is a more specific way of allocating overhead costs based on “activities” that actually contribute to overhead costs. In job-order costing and variance analysis , overhead costs are applied based on a specific cost driver such as labor hours or machine hours.

Activity-based Costing

An activity is an event, task, or unit of work with a specific purpose, whether it be designing products, setting up machines, operating machines, or distributing products. Therefore, activity-based costing considers all the potential activities instead of relying on just one variable (for example, labor hours or machine hours).

Generally, activity-based costing is used in the manufacturing industry, as it produces more accurate cost data, generating values that are close to the true cost and can be identified during the production phase.

Activity-based costing serves and complements many other analyses and measures, including target costing, product costing, product line profitability analysis, service pricing, and more. Thus, it is used to better understand the company’s true costs, and thereby formulate an appropriate pricing strategy to mitigate unnecessary expenses.

Key Highlights

  • Activity-based costing is a way of allocating overhead costs based on “activities.” This differentiates it from job-order costing, which allocates costs by a specific cost driver like machine hours.
  • An activity is an event, task or unit of work with a specific purpose, whether it be designing products, setting up machines, operating machines or distributing products.
  • Activity-based costing considers all potential cost activities instead of relying on just one variable (labor hours or machine hours).

Let take a look at the following example to compare the differences:

XYZ Company manufactures and sells two types of tables: Standard and Luxury. Annual sales, direct labor hours, and total direct labor hours per year are provided below:

Total
Standard: 2,000 units * 5 labor hours per unit10,000
Luxury: 10,000 units * 4 labor hours per unit 40,000
Total Labor Hours50,000

Costs for materials and labor for each table are provided below:

StandardLuxury
Direct Materials$25$17
Direct Labor ($12 per hour)$60$48

Manufacturing overhead costs total $800,000 every year. The breakdown of these costs among the company’s six activity cost pools is given below. The following six activities contribute to overall overhead costs.

Estimated MOHStandardLuxuryTotal
Labor related$80,00010,00040,00050,000
Machine setups$150,00030002,0005,000
Parts administration$160,000503080
Production orders$70,000100300400
Material receipts$90,000150600750
General factory machine hours $250,00012,00028,00040,000

Using the predetermined overhead rate approach with labor hours, the predetermined overhead rate is equal to $16 per labor hour ($800,000 / 50,000 labor hours). Using this information, we can design a cost card for each product.

StandardLuxury
Direct materials$25$17
Direct labor$60$48
Manufacturing overhead applied:
Standard: 5 labor hours * $16 per labor hour$80
Luxury: 4 labor hours * $16 per labor hour $64
Unit product cost $165$129

Using the activity-based costing approach, we can determine overhead rates for each activity that is relevant to production. The activities listed below are given in this example but companies usually break down the relevant activities.

ActivityEstimated MOHTotal per ActivityOverhead Rate
Labor related$80,00050,000 hours$1.60 per labor hour
Machine setups$150,0005,000 setups$30.00 per setup
Parts administration$160,00080 parts$2,000 per part
Production orders$70,000400 orders$175 per order
Material receipts$90,000750 receipts$120 per receipt
General factory machine hours $250,00040,000 machine hours $6.25 per machine hour

Next, for each product, we can use the calculated overhead rates to determine the overhead numbers:

StandardLuxury
ActivityExpected ActivityOverhead appliedExpected ActivityOverhead applied
Labor-related10,000$16,00040,000$64,000
Machine setups3,000$90,0002,000$60,000
Part administration50$100,00030$60,000
Production orders100$17,500300$52,500
Material receipts150$18,000600$72,000
General factory machine hours 12,000$75,00028,000$175,000
Total$316,500$483,500
Units produced2,000Units produced10,000
Overhead cost per unit$158.25Overhead cost per unit$48.35

Under the activity-based approach, the unit cost card gives different unit product costs for each product.

StandardLuxury
Direct materials$25$17
Direct labor$60$48
Manufacturing overhead applied:
Standard: 5 labor hours * $16 per labor hour$158.25
Luxury: 4 labor hours * $16 per labor hour $48.35
Unit product cost $243.25$113.35

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Activity-based costing (ABC) can affect the cost distribution process in three ways:

  • The allocation of overhead costs is more accurate and precise as they are separated and grouped into pools based on the number of activities. To simplify, rather than calculating the indirect expenses of the company by pooling all costs together, ABC pools costs based on activity.
  • Activity-based costing traces previously untraceable costs, such as depreciation, to particular activities.
  • The ABC method can also change the unit cost of low-volume products by transferring overhead costs from high-volume products.

By comparing the first unit cost card (i.e., when manufacturing overhead is applied based on just one variable: direct labor hours) and the second unit cost card (i.e., when manufacturing overhead is applied based on several important activities), we can see that the unit product cost for each product is generally similar. However, the activity-based approach is the more specific and precise way that companies will allocate their manufacturing overhead costs.

For the standard product, we can see that the manufacturing overhead cost per unit is much lower for the regular labor-based approach. In producing the product, more overhead costs were actually put into the process than estimated by the labor approach.

In contrast, for the luxury product, manufacturing overhead costs based on labor hours were higher when compared to the activity-based approach. When considering all relevant activities, overhead costs in manufacturing each product are actually less than that estimated by labor hours only.

Therefore, even though labor hours or machine hours may be a good starting point for companies to get a general idea of potential overhead costs, they can use activity-based costing as an alternative if they are looking to get a more exact assessment of overhead.

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Activity-Based Costing (ABC)

True Tamplin, BSc, CEPF®

Written by True Tamplin, BSc, CEPF®

Reviewed by subject matter experts.

Updated on June 08, 2023

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Table of contents, activity-based costing (abc) - definition.

An activity-based costing system (also known as ABC System ) is a two-stage procedure for assigning overhead costs to products, which focuses on the major activities performed in the production process.

Activity-based costing is a costing method that identifies activities in an organization and assigns the cost of each activity to all products and services according to the actual consumption by each.

Moreover, Activity-Based Costing (ABC) has been developed as a more modern absorption costing method to overcome the problems of under-costing and over-costing and to produce more accurate product costs.

Explanation of Activity-Based Costing

Activity based Costing (ABC) is a systematic, cause & effect method of assigning the cost of activities to products, services, customers or any cost object.

ABC is based on the principle that “products consume activities”. Traditional cost systems allocate costs based on direct labor, material cost, revenue or other simplistic methods.

As a result, traditional systems tend to over-cost high volume products, services and customers and under-cost low volume.

Activity based costing should not be treated as an alternative to job costing or process costing but as one of the best tools for refining a costing system which provides a better measurement of the non-uniformity in the use of an organization’s overhead resources for job, products and services.

Activity-based costing incorporates in its costing system the basic and vital role of different activities. ABC System refined costing system by focusing on individual activities as the fundamental cost objects.

An activity is an event, task or unit of work with a specified purpose e.g., designing products, setting up machines, operating machines and distributing products.

In traditional absorption costing, overheads are first assigned or related to cost centers, (production and service centers) and then to cost objects i.e., products or services.

But in Activity-based costing system, overheads are related or assigned to activities or grouped into cost pools before they are related to cost objects i.e., products or services.

Thus, the activity based system system uses activities instead of functional departments (Cost Centers) for absorbing overheads.

The basic feature of functional departments is that they tend to include a series of different activities causing different costs that behave in different ways.

Further, the activities also tend to run across functions.

For example, the procurement or purchase of materials is made on the basis of a requisition note sent by a manufacturing department or stores.

The purchase requisition note is not raised in the purchasing department where most of the costs relating to procurement or purchase are incurred.

Activity costs tend to behave in a similar manner to each other i.e., they have the same cost driver or the factor causing a change in the cost of an activity.

Thus, it is believed that activity-based costing helps in presenting a more realistic picture of the behavior of costs.

Difference Between Traditional Costing and Activity-Based Costing

The basic distinction between traditional cost accounting and ABC is as follows:

Traditional cost accounting techniques allocate costs to products based on attributes of a single unit.

Typical attributes include the number of direct labor hours required to manufacture a unit, purchase cost of merchandise resold or the number of days occupied.

Allocations, therefore, vary directly with the ‘volume of units produced, cost of merchandise sold or days occupied by the customer.

In contrast, Activity based costing (ABC) systems focus on activities required to produce each product or provide each service based on each product’s or service’s consumption of the activities.

Using ABC, overhead costs are traced to products and services by identifying the resources, activities and their costs and quantities to produce output.

A unit or output (a driver) is used to calculate the cost of each activity consumed during any given period of time.

An activity based costing system can be viewed in two different ways:

  • The cost assignment view provides information about resources, activities and cost objects.
  • The process view provides operational (often non-financial) information about cost drivers, activities and performance.

Factors Prompting the Development of Activity-Based Costing System

Activity based costing System has developed basically on account of the limitations of the traditional absorption costing system.

The basic factors which have prompted the development of Activity based costing (ABC System) may be summarized as follows:

  • The traditional methods applied for absorbing overheads lay emphasis on the calculation and application of overhead recovery rates which are acceptable for the valuation of stocks for the purposes of routine financial reporting . The management is not able to find these different traditional methods of costing that may be helpful in making some hard decisions which may affect the product strategies.
  • The rapid development of automated production has led to growing overhead costs. According to an estimate, the normal overhead rate which was 200% to 300% of direct costs about 15 years ago, has gone up to 500% to 800%.
  • The ever increasing and severe market competition due to globalization has increased the necessity of more accurate product costs in order to avoid the disadvantages of under-costing and over-costing.
  • There has been an increase in the tendency towards product diversification to secure economies of scope and increased market share requiring the ascertainment of more accurate product costs under the conditions of the fast-changing cost structure.

Importance/Advantages of Activity-Based Costing

Activity-based costing does not only apply to manufacture organizations: it is also appropriate for service organizations such as financial institutions , medical care providers and government units.

In fact, some banking companies have been applying the concept for years under another name - unit costing.

Unit costing is used to calculate the cost of banking services by determining the cost and consumption of each unit of output of functions required to deliver the service.

A major advantage of using Activity based costing (ABC) is that it avoids or minimizes distortions in product costing that result from arbitrary allocations of indirect costs.

Unlike more traditional line-item budgets which cannot be tied to specific outputs, ABC generates useful information on how money is being spent, if a department is being cost-effective, and how to benchmark (or compare oneself against others) for quality improvements.

Activity Based Costing also provides a clear metric for improvement. It encourages management to evaluate the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of program activities.

Some ABC systems rank activities by the degree to which they add value to the organization or its outputs.

This helps managers identify what activities are really value- added—those that will best accomplish a mission, deliver a service, or meet customer demand —thus improving decision-making through better information, and helping to eliminate waste by encouraging employees to look at all costs.

That is why an essential aspect of any ABC endeavor is to get a clear picture of the activities a business area performs.

When employees understand the activities they perform, they can better understand the costs involved.

Important Terms in Activity-Based Costing

The operation of the ABC System involves the use of the following terms:

  • Cost Object: It indicates an item for which cost is calculated using the Activity-based costing System. For Example, a service, a customer or a product.
  • Cost Driver: A cost driver is any factor or force that causes a change in the cost of an activity.

Cost driver may be divided into two parts:

(a) Resource Cost Driver and

(b) Activity Cost Driver.

The quantity measure of the resources used/consumed by an activity is called Resource Cost Driver. It is used to assign the cost of a resource to an activity or cost pool.

An activity cost driver is Really a measure of frequency and Strength of Demand, set on tasks by cost items.

It’s utilized to assign activity costs to cost objects. The price drivers for various company purposes i.e., manufacturing, promotion, research and development, etc., have been provided below:

Activity-based-costing-cost-drivers

Steps to Follow in Activity-Based Costing

Activity Based Costing requires accountants to follow these steps.

  • Step 1: Identify the activities that consume resources.
  • Step 2: Assign costs to activities.
  • Step 3: Identify the cost driver associated with each activity. A cost driver is a factor that causes, or "drives" an activity's cost.
  • Step 4: Compute a cost rate per cost driver unit.
  • Step 5: Assign costs to products by multiplying the cost driver rate times the volume of cost drivers consumed by the product.

Need or Objects of Activities-Based Costing

ABC System is needed by an organization for the purpose of accurate product costing in cases where:

  • Production overhead costs are high in comparison to the various direct costs;
  • The product range of the organization is highly diverse;
  • Overhead resources used by various products are very different in amounts;
  • Volume or quantity of production is not a primary driving force for the consumption of overhead resources.

Limitations of ABC System

The ABC System suffers from the following limitations:

  • This system is more time-consuming due to the fact that the number of activities to which the overhead resources of an organization have to be related, is very large.
  • It involves a high cost of operation and can be used only by large organizations. It is not suitable for small scale units.
  • In some cases, the establishment of cause and effect relationship between Cost Driver and Costs may not be a simple affair.

Jumbo Auto Ltd. produces three products ‘P’, ‘Q’ and ‘R’ for which the standard costs and quantities per unit are as follows:

ABC-System-Example

Production overhead split by departments:

Production-Overheads

Department ‘A’ is labor intensive while Department ‘B’ is machine intensive. Total labor hours in Department A = 55,000 Total machine hours in Department B = 1,50,000 Production overhead split by activity:

Production-Overheads-details

You are required to:

(i). Prepare Product Cost Statement under traditional Absorption Costing and Activity-based Costing Method.

(ii). Compare the results under two methods:

Traditional Absorption Costing

Calculation of overhead absorption rates : Department ‘A’ = $5,50,000 / 55,000 Labor hours = $10 per labor hour.

Department ‘B’ = $7,50,000 / 1,50,000 Machine Hours = $5 per machine hour.

Production-Cost-Statement-under-Traditional-absorption-costing-methods

Activity-based Costing

Calculation of Cost Driver Rates:

(i). Receiving/Inspecting = $7,00,000 / 2,500 (No. of batches received/inspected) = $280 per requisition .

(ii). Production Scheduling/Machine Sets-up = $6,00,000 / 400 (No. of batches for scheduling) = $1,500 per set-up

Production-Cost-Statement-under-activity-based-costing-methods

Note: Calculation of Overhead per unit.

Receiving: Product P = ($280 x 600) / 5,000 = $33.60 Product Q = ($280 x 900) / 15,000 = $16.80 Product R = ($280 x 1,000) / 22,500 = $12.44

Production Scheduling: Product P = ($1,500 x 140) / 5,000 = $42.00 Product Q = ($1,500 x 110) / 15,000 = $11.00 Product R = ($1,500 x 150) / 22,500 = $10.00

Comparison of Results Under Both Costing Methods

From the above analysis, it is clear that the Traditional Absorption Costing Method and Activity-based Costing Method show different cost results.

Under the traditional absorption costing method, Product ‘R’ is more expensive while under activity-based costing method, product ‘P’ is more expensive.

If we assume that Activity-Based Costing is more accurate (which may or may not be possible), under traditional absorption costing method, product ‘R’ would be over-priced while product ‘P’ would be underpriced as a result of which sales for product ‘R’ would be less and sales for product ‘P’ would be more leading to a loss to the company.

Activity-Based Costing (ABC) FAQs

What are the different types of cost drivers under abc.

Explicit cost driver- explicit cost drivers are those which are included in the accounting records of an organization at the time of preparing Financial Statements. These include items such as salaries, raw material consumption etc. Implicit cost drivers- Implicit cost drivers are not recorded in the accounting records of an organization during the preparation of Financial Statements. These include factors such as machine hours, labor hours etc.

What is a cost pool under ABC?

A cost pool consists of one or more similar activities that can't be identified easily with specific products, services, departments etc. Cost pools are used to account for the common costs of the organization.

What is a cost element under ABC?

A cost element refers to an account which receives and accumulates costs over a period of time. It also includes the revenue accounts that receive and accumulate revenues over a period of time.

What is a service level in ABC?

A service level measures the number of requests that are processed by an organization within a set time frame. Generally, the higher the number of services within the predetermined time period, the more efficient is the organization.

What is Activity-Based Costing (ABC)?

Activity-Based Costing (ABC) is a method of cost accounting that assigns costs to products and services based on the activities that produce them, rather than allocating overhead costs using traditional methods such as direct labor hours or machine hours.

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Related Topics

  • Activity-Based Costing (ABC) Principles, History & Steps
  • Computation of Unit Cost Under Activity-Based Costing

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Costing for Decision Making: Activity-based Costing vs. Theory of Constraints

  • February 2013
  • The International Journal of Knowledge Culture and Change Management Annual Review 12(1):1-13

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Activity-based Systems: Measuring the Costs of Resource Usage

  • R. Kaplan , R. Cooper
  • Published 1 September 1992
  • Business, Economics
  • Accounting Horizons

572 Citations

The activity-based approach, integrating the cost of secondary support activities into an activity-based costing system, activity based cost from the perspective of competitive advantage, time-driven activity-based costing., activity-based costing: accounting for a market orientation, the practicability of activity-based costing in service firms.

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THE INTEGRATED ACTIVITY-BASED COSTING AND ECONOMIC VALUE ADDED INFORMATION SYSTEM

Abc and variability accounting; differences and potential benefits of integration, how to design and implement an integrated activity-based costing and economic value added system, product costing for complex manufacturing systems, related papers.

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  5. After 30 Years, What Has Happened to Activity-Based Costing? A

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    Management accounting continues to be useful for business, and one of its tools is Activity-Based Costing (ABC). This paper is a thematic research review on the ABC System, its development, applications, challenges, and benefits. Several researchers claim that ABC is efficient in product pricing, cost-cutting strategy, and customer and ...

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