Benefits of ABC Company Essay

The budget process is a powerful planning tool for government to make important resource decisions. According the Carney and Schoenfeld‘s article on How to read a Budget, an operating budget is a reflection of government’s financial plans. When a budget is

This type of cost system further allows the activities to be specifically tracked in each of the company’s markets.

This type of cost system further allows the activities to be specifically tracked in each of the company’s markets.

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.

The authors relied heavily on two studies to create their argument. The first study mentioned was the Pinto et al article. In this study, "Pinto and colleagues (5) assessed the

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?

According to Aubrey & Harrison (2004), more recent studies indicate

In using ABC overhead costs are distributed differently across the three products, but in total they are the same, in total. However, ABC changes the information that managers receive to make effective business decisions, which will ultimately result in improved business results.

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

Activity-based-costing (ABC) system find activities as the drive for each cost, calculate the average cost per driver’s activity, and times budgeted activities for budgeted cost. It is worth mentioning that ABC system is not used to find problems in cost records, or predict future cost based on that.

HP in 1994 decided not to integrate the ABC in the Cost Accounting Information System (abbreviated CAIS) for a number of reasons. The first reason is that at that time the CAIS was implemented in all HP business units worldwide. This system was considered very complex and difficult to change. Because ABC was only used in one business unit it was thought to be insensible to change the whole system. The second reason is connected to the codification of the operations in the CAIS. If the ABC would be integrated this system would have to be reorganized and all the employees would have to learn to operate the new

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

14-1: “Standard Costing Is Alive and Well at Parker Brass” by D. Johnsen and P. Sopariwala, Management Accounting Quarterly (Winter 2000), pp. 12-20.