Critically evaluate the merits and limitations of unit cost information as a decision-making tool.
Introduction
Understanding how costs behave is vitally important when making production decisions, preparing budgets, and so on. A unit cost is the total expenditure incurred by a company to produce, store and sell one unit of a product or service. Unit costs include all fixed costs, or overhead costs, and all variable costs, or direct material costs and direct labour costs, involved in production.
Determining the unit cost is a quick way to check if companies are efficient in producing their products. The cost information system plays an important role in every organisation within the decision-making process. An important task of management is to ensure the control over operations, processes, activity sectors, and not ultimately on costs.
Merits of Unit Cost Information
It is extremely important for management to know the unit cost, but also the full breakdown of cost for each unit or service. There are many reasons for management to understand the unit cost.
For companies to be successful or to be competitive they need to always know how much it’s costing to produce a
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Often companies will minimise costs that will allow to sell with a low margin, but at more quantity and frequency, the best example of this would-be Ryanair. Ryanair has an excellent understanding of its unit costs and this has been a huge benefit in developing their business strategy. They looked at using secondary airports as an alternative to the major international airports as the offered cheaper terms and by eliminating offers of luggage transfers and connecting flights. These decisions came from investigating each cost and in turn allowed them to reduce their fares to a price that a lot of other airlines couldn’t and still can’t afford. These decisions drove passenger number from 6 million people in 1999 to 119 million in
Assuming that the company’s goal is to maximize profits, the current cost system is not an appropriate tool for strategic planning. The ambiguity of the overhead costs per product makes it difficult to accurately analyze the cause and effect relationships of changes and/or improvements to specific product line.
I believe a business should consider costing because by having reasonable product prices they could win over customers from their competitors. However, I also believe costing can make the difference between excellent idea and ruinous one. Costing can be vital to a company because it can allow them to estimate the costs of many things such as products, good and even services. As a result of estimating what the prices of the business could be then save more money.
Overhead costs are not in proportion to the production output because of the method they are using. This leads to inaccurate pricing and costing decisions. An Activity Based Costing System would help find the real relationship between the products produced and overhead.
According to Epstein and Buhovac, (2014), costing system is a process designed to monitor the costs incurred in a certain business. Costing systems are meant to advise the management on how to choose the most appropriate course of action with cost efficiency and capability. According to Cardinaels and Labro (2009) costing system provides detailed cost information needed by management needs to control current operations with the aim of improving the future. Below are some of the costing systems that are common to many organizations (Epstein & Buhovac, 2014).
Traditional costing methods is the process of determining a unit cost by lumping indirect costs of manufacturing together and then parceling out by volume, number of units, machine hours or direct labor hours. Indirect costs
Actual costing is rarely used because managers can’t wait until the end of the year to obtain product costs. Information about product costs is needed as the year goes for planning, control, and decision making.
On the off chance that my family would be wise to information and comprehension of how costs set, I think we would have had more certainty when we expanded costs since ourselves would have known our clients were getting esteem and the confirmation that we were all the while going to make a benefit. Seeing how the cost of merchandise and administrations are land at, and the various types of costs included is essential in the touching base at the right price for productivity and also arranging and setting objectives for what's to come. I likewise came to value that a loss article can be any part of a firm, whether it be an administration, item or process and costs must be assigned to cost questions suitably to keep away from perplexity for chiefs. Administrators must have a sound learning and comprehension of the various types of expenses and the ways outputs are apportioned to items since it can be mind boggling and subject to the sort of business and kind of cost article included. Amid the section, I went over the inquiry "By what means may number make reality, instead of "just" reflect
Hi Conster, cost behaviors impact businesses in the way that if the raw material increases, the finished goods will also increase. For instance, every year the price of the steel goes up; therefore, any product build with steel will have an impact on their prices to cover up the increase in paid for the raw material (Edmonds,
There is a company in the area where I live that manufactures custom made pictures frames. The elements of the unit cost would include the raw materials (wood, glass, glue, nails, etc.) and paint sprays used for finishing the frames. The unit cost refers to the total expense incurred in order to produce one item. In order to determine the unit cost the company has to take into consideration the fixed costs, variable costs, overhead costs, direct material,
According to Buitelaar (2004), this involves the cost of accessing to market information that would reduce uncertainty. Information such as prices, quality, research into residential preferential, comparison of brands and different suppliers incurred money, time and effort. Generally, any cost of production would include production and transaction costs, whereas the latter include cost of acquiring information and institutional costs (Buitelaar, 2004).
unit, two types of costs are distinguished. Firstly the direct costs, consisting of the direct
Businesses – from manufacturing, merchandising and service industries alike – take careful considerations for their costing systems. Setting-up competitive prices in the market can be a result of proper costing methods. Misallocation of costs may lead to incorrect price estimates, continuous production of unprofitable products, and ineffective processing schedules. In this case study, we will discuss the costing methods Zauner Ornaments are currently using and upon conclusion, it will enable us to distinguish the advantages and disadvantages of each costing method.
with a number of strategic issues facing a capital-intensive, mature industry. Their product costing system was
With this costing technique , a Manager can easily determine if there is a weak link in production chain by keeping an eye on the cost per unit each day. Using the accounting programs involved in process costing, a manager can figure out where in the process the item 's per unit cost is going up. This way a single manager or a team of managers can monitor millions of units being produced without needing to check on each department unless a problem comes up. By the same token, these numbers need to be watched diligently, as a change of even a fraction of a cent can cost thousands of dollars quite quickly.
Cost accounting is concerned with cost and therefore is necessary to understand the meaning of term cost in a proper perspective.