Gibson Insurance Company

As the company continues to grow at a tremendous rate, the organizational structure became more complicated for the managers to maintain. Additionally, the Association is unsure of how to deal with the growth, and continue to preserve their company philosophy of “people supported first” at the same time. When the company was small their informal way managing the support service was a great fit, however, with more people constantly being supported, a more structural way of overseeing the expanding support service infrastructure needed to be established.

Over the last 6 months, stores throughout the company have used a performance management system to boost morale, respond to employees’ sense of hopelessness and fear, and retain effective employees.

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

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 of Ranier Falls, Georgia needs assistance in evaluating and classifying costs in order to implement an activity-based costing system. As stated in the case, these costs will be used for planning and control decisions rather than inventory valuation. The activity-based costing system will provide better allocation of Glaser’s overhead costs rather than a system to look at the cost drivers or the activities that their overhead costs comprise. Glaser’s general structure of an activity-based costing model should consist of cost

The following is an analysis regarding if Competition Bikes Incorporated should change its traditional costing method to activity based costing (ABC). This consideration is being given because the organization is changing its sales strategy in the San Diego plant to produce 9 Titanium bikes for every 5 CarbonLite bikes, and there are indications that manufacturing will experience a 10% increase due to new environmental regulations.

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.

As previously mentioned, the use of activity-based costing gives Kemps an advantage when competing for customers in an ever more competitive and growing market. However, the ability to succinctly distinguish how many small changes, when taken together, can have a large impact on cost savings (and therefore profit), is necessary in order to convince customers who may not be familiar with the many benefits of ABC. Mainly, management would want to demonstrate how the cost savings that they enjoy are ultimately passed on to their customers, perhaps by showing some of the improvements that have been made to their own company as a result of implementation, specifically focusing on advancements that would have a direct impact on the customer’s business.

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

When Activity Based Costing (Weetman, 2010, p. 85) is used to calculate the monthly cost per

Gibson Company is an insurance company that mainly sells annuities and life insurance. Gibson possesses two subsidiary companies, Midwest and Compton, which also sell the same products but with different prices and features. Both subsidiaries rely on Gibson provides administrative supports for maintaining. Gibson used to use an objective measure to calculate each policy as the support costs allocation basis. The original method did not reflect the real cost by support activities. Moreover, when the sales volume had increased, the profitability declined. The managers are considered the prices are set improper or costs are out of control. Management is looking for a better solution for solving pricing

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.

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.

Gibson Insurance Company has tasked Rebecca Hampton, the controller, with reviewing the company 's allocation of corporate support costs in order to better assign the cost attributed to product lines and business units. This is important because it would help to provide better information for pricing decisions, sales compensation, and focus on areas in cost improvement. Gibson sells two categories of financial products: annuities and life insurance. They are both sold by in-house sales agents. Gibson decided to start purchasing other corporations in order to quickly grow the company’s customer base and its assets under management (AUM).