Analyzing The Budget And Its Advantages Over The Traditional Cost Accounting Method

For example interest rates, the cost of raw materials including fuel, the number of sales or orders that we make and in turn all of these rely on other factors. The best therefore that can be done when developing a budget is to look at all the factors that are likely to affect the budget and decide how to take account of each one. If there is a previous budget (last year or last month) then it is sensible to look at how this has been achieved or not as the case may be, and what factors affected the outcome. If we are looking at monthly budgets it might be a better comparison to look at the same month twelve months ago as well as the previous months. The more factors we take into consideration when estimating a budget, the more accurate our budget will be.

The week four individual paper addresses the implementation of Activity Based Costing (ABC) by Super Bakery, Inc., a virtual corporation founded by Franco Harris. Specifically, management strategies, the reasoning behind an ABC system, and the alternatives of a job order cost system or a process order cost system are assessed for this enterprise.

By creating a budget this facility will be better prepared in knowing how much money they spend and

Under an ABC system, the allocation of costs to products is achieved through at least four analytical steps. Firstly, costs are grouped into activity levels. Secondly, cost drivers are

Activity-based costing (ABC) methodology is an instrument designed to provide accountants and managers with valuable costing information that will allow them to make sound strategic decisions. It is used as a secondary methodology rather than a replacement for the company’s primarily costing system. The ABC methodology identifies activities in an organization and for each activity it assigns a cost. The cost reflects the actual resource consumption by each activity that has been identified.

One of the best aspects of the way the time-driven ABC system was put into place at Kemps was how efficiently and accurately management determined the main issues with the current cost system and responded with appropriate and relevant solutions. For example, one of the greatest problems the company was facing was that many of its operating costs were spread out equally over a customer base that was growing more diverse and demanding more personalized and varied service, effectively cutting or potentially eliminating entirely Kemps’ profit margins for a product. Therefore,

8. Using the ABC data, compute the average contribution to profit per account for both retail and business customers. What business strategy would be a manager using the ABC cost system likely adopt? How does this result compare to your response to Requirement 1, Part E?

The first issue which needs to be addressed is to perform a monthly cash flow analysis for the fiscal year ending December 31st, 1990. Robert & Alex would like to open up their own restaurant/brew pub with $200,000 of their own money and with the use of external financing to finance the rest of the company until excess cash flows remain stable and positive.

The budgeted income statement, cash flows, and balance sheet follow in order. The income budget relies on the revenue and expense forecast from the operating budget, while the budget cash flows are planned for financial and investment activities. A final component of the budget process, the projected balance statement, can be used to tie in all the budgeting dependencies. Once a budget has been prepared, evaluation can be expected before approval. Budgetary components may require several iterations before finalizing the organizational budget.

3. Under the new activity-based costing (ABC) system, compute the indirect cost allocation rates for each of the three activities:

Q3. How were the limitations of the existing cost system overcome by the ABC Cost System? What are the implications of the ABC system?

Question 2. Was the implementation of ABC at GEI successful? What did GEI do well? What areas of the implementation could have been improved on? What are the key success factors that lead to or impede successful ABC implementation? Be sure to consider behavioural as well as technical factors. Analysis 2: It appeared that GEI 's two-phased implementation plan had been partially successful. The first phase succeeded in delivering timely, revised product-cost information for strategic pricing and mix decision making. The second phase struggled to deliver upon its promise of delivering productivity improvement and cost reduction. The ABC implementation was completed in the nine-month time frame, as planned. Based on a total of 88 interview sessions, 674 activities and 254 activity drivers were identified across all five plants and entered into the standard cost subsystem that provided data for the financial reporting system. The project team streamlined the implementation process by only including activities within the cost model that it believed could materially affect strategic product-pricing and mix

Budgeting is crucial in the well-being of a company especially the financial health status of a company. In fact, no professionally managed firm would fail to budget, since the budget establishes what is authorized, how to plan for purchasing contracts and hiring, and indicates how much financing is needed to support planned activity. It is routine for a company to budget for its expenses. Expense budgets act as a guideline of how much revenue a company would require keeping the activities running. It is used to set the company’s targets for a certain period.

Beer Company 2 is a brewer of “seasonal and year-round beers with smaller production volume and higher prices” that “outsources most of its brewing activity” (pg. 120). It is financially conservative, and has undergone a “major cost-savings initiative to counterbalance the recent surge in packaging and freight costs” (pg. 120).

Budget and budgetary control practices are undeniably indispensable as organizations routinely go about their business activities and operations. These organizations are constantly on the alert on how actual levels of performance agree with planned or budgeted performance. A budget expresses a plan in monetary terms. It is prepared and approved prior to a particular budgeted period and explicitly may show the income, expenditure and the capital to be employed by organizations in achieving their goals and objectives.