Cooper and Kaplan

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.

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.

Activity-based costing can be defined as the managers allocate costs depending on the quantity of resources a product or service consumed in the manufacture of goods and services. The activity based

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.

Activity-based costing is a system of accounting that puts emphases on activities performed to produce products or services (Schneider, 2012). In this costing system every activity is assigned a cost (Schneider, 2012). The goal of activity-based costing is not to allot common costs to products but to measure and then price out all the resources used for activities that sustain the production and delivery of products and services to customers (Mazumder, 2007). Activity-based costing is a cost system that is useful in business because of the fact that it does account for the cost of the products, resources used to produce the product and delivery of the product.

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

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

An organization costing system is a system that helps the management with the strategy planning while the system plays an important role in providing accurate cost information about the products and customers (Curtin, 2006). UPS utilizes the Activity-Based Costing (ABC) system. ABC assumes that activities cause costs and that cost objects create the demand for activities (Marx,

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

With this system each customer’s order cost the same amount to complete causing orders with high profit limits to subsidized orders with low profit limits making it difficult for Super Bakery to know the true cost for an order. The company changed to the activity-based costing (ABC) system allowing the managers the ability to recognize the cost and profit margins for each sale. The ABC system associates the costs with the activities allowing managers the opportunity to access a system that allocates overhead costs that uses multiple bases. Costs can be traced back to each individual’s account regardless of the product provider letting managers know which products are profitable and which ones are not. The traditional costing system allocates cost to departments or jobs instead of overhead cost pools. The traditional costing system makes it difficult to know which activity or product is making a profit.

Nowadays, we know that activity based costing system assigns overhead costs to products or services products that using a two-stage process, which focuses on activities. ABC is a relatively new and very important topic in managerial accounting. ABC allows us to find a way that we could determine the profitability of every product, profitability of every customer we serve, and the profitability of our process. Contents in brief, first that comparing potential advantages of ABC versus traditional costing methods. The

Activity-based management, activity-based costing and continuous improvement, all these help in the improvement of the efficiency in manufacturing, better control of overhead costs and the accurate costing of products. With this in mind, We disagree with the advice that Chuck Davis, the firm’s controller, gave Leonard Bryner. The traditional way of costing produce average costs that severely overstated or understated. Without the accurate costs, the firm would not be able to price properly their products and that would be damaging to the firm. With activity-based costing and management, all costs are accounted for with the help activity-drivers and overhead costs are decreased. In turn, the costs that the firm has for their products are more accurate and pricing is much easier.

During the 1980s the limitations of traditional product costing systems began to be widely publicised. These systems were designed decades ago when most companies manufactured a narrow range of products, and direct labour and materials were the dominant factory costs. Overhead costs were relatively small, and the distortions arising from inappropriate overhead allocations were not significant. Information processing costs were high, and it was therefore difficult to justify more sophisticated overhead allocation methods.