Eco 372 Week 4 Reflection Journal

Explain how basic cost statements and standard costs are used in your workplace, explaining their purpose and nature and how they are used to control cost

Product production comes with many types of costs. Four of the most common costs are prevention costs, appraisal costs, internal failure costs and external failure costs. These four costs are called quality costs and are costs that all businesses that produce products will pay. The amount of money that will go to each cost is dependent on the amount spent on the other costs. In other words, an increase in one type of cost can result in a decrease in another. Businesses need to understand the nature of each cost in order to understand for which cost to budget.

While we are performing our analysis on different aspects of the company, we look at the three main types of cost. When we remain devoted to improving our costs, and the faults related, we show our same devotion to our consumers. This is portrayed by the quality of products we put on the shelves. Prevention costs, appraisal costs and Failure costs are areas

There are several factors that affect our economy, gross domestic product (GDP), real GDP, nominal GDP, unemployment rate, inflation rate, and interest rates. All of these factors have influences over how we purchase groceries, weather there will be massive layoffs of employees, and decrease in taxes.

During week one meet with staff and providers to discuss the research that supports my change project. Also, randomly talking with patients to get their input and what they feel would meet their learning needs. Meeting with the stakeholders from my clinic. Reaching out to the IT department and meeting with the finance department.

Global competition has a direct impact on Wal-Mart. Global companies offer competition for consumer business and companies within the United States and other countries who compete with Wal-Mart. The global competition for consumer business primarily takes place in the e-commerce domain that Wal-Mart dominates. Wal-Mart offers their consumers a convenient one-stop website with all the merchandise and products offered in the store, and some that are not. The exchange is significantly sped up by the convenience and availability of the internet. The internet allows transactions to take place at a faster pace than the standard face-to-face or telephone method. Target, a major competitor of Wal-Mart, also has a Website that is reached by consumers all over the world. This added competition, especially from a competitor in the same industry, forces Wal-Mart to keep their prices low while offering

A cost centre is a department within a company that does not produce direct profit and adds to the cost of running a company. However, all cost centres perform an important job. It improves the satisfaction of customers and indirectly increases sales.[1] The manager and employees of cost centre are not accountable for its profit and investment decision but they are responsible for its cost.[2] They are liable for keeping their cost in line or below budget because cost centre does not produce directly from its activities.[3] The performance of the managers is assessed by comparing the actual expenses incurred with the budgeted expenses for the cost centre. Basically cost is the control data in the cost centre. [

During this summer, I had the opportunity to intern at a local Community Development Corporation. The Monroe-Union County CDC focuses on helping low-income families buy, save, and fix homes. During this internship, I gained two things, experience and a desire to help the community.

Being a part of APU & ISL Global Leadership Workshop with students from different countries would help me increase better understanding about cultural diversity, enhance cultural competency as well as making more connection . Additionally, participating in discussion with Japanese companies allow me to have a deeper view in Japanese management system as I have intention to work in Japan after graduate. In general, this workshop is a great chance to gain more skills and experience.

Understanding the sources (incomes) and uses (expenses) of funds, and the budget deficit/surplus that results, are core accounting measures to consider in short and long term personal financial planning. Also, grasping key concepts like how your salary/wages are earned and segmented/taxed is important in determining your net incomes. How to approach deficits and surpluses and their associated action plans come from sound accounting understanding. Accounting develops controls on how to deal with budget deficits like increasing income, reducing expenses and borrowing. Understanding how sunk costs and opportunity costs factor into alternative choices and borrowing come to us from sound accounting knowledge and play a role in personal planning. Lastly, through various standard reporting approaches, we, though accounting, can develop the ability to look at current and future personal finance decisions and health via income statements, balance sheets, ratios and other common size book keeping measures.

Bhimani, A., Horngren, C., Datar, S., Rajan, M. et al. (2012) Management and Cost Accounting. 5th ed. Edinburgh: Prentice Hall, p.369 - 378.

Cost and management accounting is an integral element in preparation of an entity’s financial reports. Cost accounting consists of various branches, including; job and process costing, absorption costing, traditional costing and activity based costing. An efficient costing system allows managers and other users of financial reports to make decisions to better the company, in reducing and streamlining costs, to improve overall profits. The way in which managers achieve this can be a rigorous and time consuming task, however, if a costing system can be perfected, productivity and general cost reduction can be achieved and an overall more efficient operation of the business will ensue. This essay will critically discuss factors in which a business consider in deciding on a costing system to implement and operate when establishing a costing system. In this article I will describe the different methods of costing, explain why I believe activity based costing is the most efficient method, and provide a real world example to support my claim.

In today’s business world, there is much debate about the future of standard costing and the determination of the system becoming obsolete. With some academicians making it clear that this method is inappropriate in a modern manufacturing environment, many others are still using this system. These systems are designed to properly allocate costs of direct labor, indirect labor, materials, overhead, and selling/ general/administrative accounts on a unit basis for the purpose of accurately costing products and the subsequent control of those costs in managing the production, marketing, purchasing, and administrative functions of the business. Even though these systems are still widely popular and used for many US manufacturing firms there is still much controversy surrounding these systems in deciding if the systems are the most effective or are useless? In fact, since the early 1980s standard cost systems (SCS) have been under attack as not providing the information needed for advanced manufacturers (Hansen and Mowen, 2013). The explanation of this claim is that standard costing does not meet the needs of business because of the introduction of advanced manufacturing technologies, shorter product life cycles, decreasing emphasis of labor cost in the total production costs, and intense global competition. However, with 74 percent of respondents verifying that they were using standard costing systems still and that it is the best method out there as of right now, a

“Costs may be classified in a variety of ways, depending on their nature and the information needs of management. The analysis of total costs into its behaviour elements is essential for effective cost and management accounting”

Oak City is an interdisciplinary case that involves cost allocation and determination issues in a