Headquarters’ Overhead Cost Allocation at Korea Auto Insurance Co. Inc Analysis

The current cost system allocates overhead costs once a year, as a function of direct labor dollars. This allocation strategy results in:

Budget management analysis is used by mangers as a tool and helps determine that all resources available are being used efficiently. The budgets are determined yearly and are based upon the previous year’s budget and variances. This paper will discuss specific strategies to manage budgets within forecast, compare five to seven expense results with budget expectations, describe possible reasons for variances, give strategies to keep results aligned with expectations, recommend three benchmarking techniques, and identify those that might improve budget accuracy, and justify the choices made.

•Weaknesses: mistakes Opportunity Cost; some service departments are not charged for the use of other service departments; and selection of which department is

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.

choose the most appropriate and effective overhead rate, particularly, because it guides management in its tasks of product pricing, job costing, and budgeting. Businesses can use the single company-wide method or can opt for the departmental method. Auerbach

Model Description The model takes much of the busywork out of the case, enabling students to spend more time on interpretation and evaluation. Like most case models, the student and instructor versions differ only in regard to the input data. The instructor’s version contains the complete base case inputs, while these inputs are zeroed out in the student version of the model. The model for this case takes the input data (cost pool values and allocation rates) and allocates overhead costs from the three overhead departments to the three patient services departments using all four allocation methods. Additionally, the model calculates the profitability of each patient services department under each allocation method. The model’s (instructor’s version) Input Data and Key Output sections are as follows:

d. External matters (legal proceedings; legislation; loss of a key franchise, license, or patent; loss of a principal customer or supplier; or uninsured or underinsured catastrophe).

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

Essentially, with the current cost system, the managerial analysis is highly flawed due to a lack of crucial in-depth cost information, as indicated by:

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

Allocating overhead costs is one of the important tasks and is necessary to be done by management accountant. One key reason is that in term of pricing strategies, many firms decide their products’ selling price based on their cost. And the selling price has to cover all the costs and profit.

The current method of apportioning production overheads based on direct labour hours can be described as a traditional approach to product costing. In a manufacturing company’s financial statements, each item produced must be allocated some of the production overheads to make the statements compliant. Sometimes the individual costs of these items can be calculated incorrectly based on overall production overhead and the system of allocating in place, however the overall financial statement can still be accurate. This traditional method of allocating the production

The purpose of this paper is to answer a few important questions: Why do companies allocate costs? How do companies allocate costs? And how this cost allocation can affect the decision making of the company. It is important for the companies to find the proper method to allocate the costs. Cost allocation is an important issue in many companies because many of the costs associated with designing, producing and distributing products and services are not easily identified with the products and services that are created. It would have been easier for companies to allocate cost if costs were directly traceable with the products and the cost allocation would have been minor issue for the company. The decision-making

Assigning the overhead costs to the products shows how profitable the products are after deducting all cost. However, it is important to find the appropriate method of overhead cost allocation. In Sippican’s case the traditional accounting method is used, which does not reflect the real resource usage of the different product lines. The correct method in this case would be to apply the time-driven ABC approach for cost allocation. Such method apart from showing the actual profitability after all cost deductions also depicts the differences in resource usage rates between the products and, thus, allows for identification of cost drivers. A contribution margin

There are different costs that respond to the different activities like variable costs are directly associated with the products sold. The cost behavior patterns of selling, general, administrative, and other operating expenses are determined, and these expenses are budgeted accordingly. For example, sales commissions will be a function of the forecast of either sales dollars or units. The historical pattern of some expenses will be affected by changes in strategy that management may plan for the budget period. In a participative budgeting system, the manager of each department or cost responsibility center will submit the anticipated cost of the department 's planned activities, along with descriptions of the activities and explanations of significant differences from past experience. After review by higher levels of management, and perhaps negotiation, a final budget will be established. Because of the necessity to recognize cost behavior patterns for planning and control purposes, overhead costs will be classified as variable or fixed.