Benefits Of Using The Cost Driver Rates

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.

14. A decision to work closely with a limited number of suppliers for the purpose of ensuring that the proper materials are available at the optimal time is an example of:

Company Wide Overhead Rate equal Forecast Overhead divided by Expected Machine Hours Overhead Rate equal $480,000 equal $6 per machine hour 80,000. Company Wide Rate: Direct Material Costs x Batch Size plus Direct Labor Costs x Batch Size Maxiflow: Alaska: 135 x 20 equal 2700 110 x 20 equal 2200 75 x 20 equal 1500 95 x 20 equal 1900 equal $4200 per batch equal $4100 per batch Departmental Rate. Direct Materials Costs plus Direct Labor Costs divided by Each Department Hour Maxiflow: 135 plus 75 equal $210 Radiator Parts Fabrication: 210 divided by 28 equal $7.50 per batch Radiator Assembly, Weld, and Test equal 210 divided by 30 equal $7 per batch Compressor Parts Fabrication: 210 divided by 32 equal $6.60 per batch Compressor Assembly and Test: 210 divided by 26 equal $8.10 per batch Alaska: 110 plus 95 equal 205 Radiator Parts Fabrication: 205 divided by 16 equal $12.80 per batch Radiator Assembly, Weld, and Test: 205 divided by 74 equal $2.70 per batch Compressor Parts Fabrication: 205 divided by 8 equal $25.60 per batch Compressor Assembly and Test: 205 divided by 66 equal $3.10 per batch. There was only a $100 difference between Maxiflow and Alaska when it came to company-wide rates per batch.

Wilkerson employs a Normal Cost System, which means that they use predetermined overhead rates along with actual costs for direct material and direct labor. Normal costing systems are appropriate when overhead costs are a relatively small percentage of total manufacturing costs and product diversity is limited. For Wilkerson, normal costing does not make sense. Overhead costs make up over 50 percent of total manufacturing costs and their product offering is relatively more diverse. This indicates that the current accounting system in place may be distorting costs significantly. Supporting data:

Glaser Health Products manufactures medical items for the health care industry. Production involves machining, assembly and painting. Finished units are then packed and shipped. The financial controller is interested to introduce an activity-based costing (ABC) system to allocate (or distribute) indirect costs to products. Indirect costs, as distinct from direct costs, cannot be unambiguously linked to specific products. The controller would like to calculate product costs based on ABC for planning and control, not inventory valuation.

Under a traditional system, overhead cost is allocated to an activity based on hours or rates for direct labor or machine usage. However, this approach does not clearly indicate how much overhead cost will be needed in order to complete a job through a particular function. ABC methodology is to be used as an alternative to traditional accounting where a business 's overhead costs (indirect costs such as electrical energy consumption for heating or cooling, or indirect cost associated with marketing) are allocated as a proportion of direct costs, to an activity. This approach is unsatisfactory because there can be cases where two activities could absorb the same direct costs

Overhead costs include rent, office staff, depreciation, and other. Once the flexible budget was complete, variances between the actual and flexible budget could be calculated (Exhibit B). The variance for frame assembly was favorable with actual costs being $82,663 less than in the flexible budget. The variances for wheel and final assembly however were both unfavorable. Wheel assembly had an unfavorable variance of $50,650, while final assembly variance was the highest at an unfavorable variance of $231,200. Taking into account these three aspects of direct cost, direct cost has an unfavorable variance $199,187. Although most overhead costs are fixed, 2/3 of other costs are variable and increase with the increased production. As shown in Exhibit B, overhead variance is unfavorable at $60,000. The direct cost variance and overhead variable together lead to a total unfavorable variance of $259,187.

If we compare the old job costing method with the Activity based costing method we can see in the table below that the activity base rate gives us a much more accurate insight in allocating the manufacturing overhead costs. In fact, the activity based overhead calculation shows us that the activity rates for Valves and Pumps are lower than the rates used in plantwide production rates, but the activity based rate for Flow Controllers is around 50% higher than the cost calculated in the job costing method. The reason for this difference in our opinion can be traced back to the high receiving and production control costs as well as packaging &

9. (Ignore income taxes in this problem.) The Crawford Company is pondering an investment in a machine that

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

Under the existing cost system for the turning machine area, there are two direct costs and three cost pools for overhead costs. The two direct costs are simply Direct Labor and Direct Material, which are traced to the cost object, which is Machine Parts. The total overhead is split into three cost pools, which are the following: overhead applied on direct labor, overhead applied on material dollars, and overhead applied on ACTS machine hours. Furthermore, each cost pool is broken down into direct and period sub categories. The mentioned cost pools for the following cost drivers: Direct Labor dollars, Material dollars, and machine hours.

• This cost method does not provide the best system for JDCW’s cost allocation. By using only three overhead rates the present system grossly undermines the true production costs since other activities of the production process are not acknowledged.

1. Use the Overhead Cost Activity Analysis in Exhibit 5 and other data on manufacturing

Abby Conroy was tasked with calculating an effective quote for Breeland Ltd., she chose the activity based accounting costing system since it more accurately captures the related costs. A special order was placed by Breeland Ltd. with Ace Fertilizer Company. The did not plan to order more of this product in the future. Based on Ace’s policy, the special order included disposal costs for any used materials in the event no other orders existed for the unused materials at the time the Breeland contract was signed. Abby correctly calculated the total direct material and labor costs and accurately arrived at the indirect costs using the ABC method and used cost activity pools that make sense for the company and

First, we have identified if there is really an insufficiency in the amount of selling prices set by the Sales Department, in reference to Exhibit 1 of the case. We did this through identifying the maximum amount of overhead costs that the company can incur for the three products and comparing it with the total overhead costs. See Table 1 for details.