Essay On Activity Based Costing Method

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 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.

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.

This paper provides a brief presentation of Activity-Based Costing methodology, how is used as well as its short comings.

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,

We will examine the given data from the case and compare the unit costs from the company’s current costing system (traditional costing) and from activity-based costing. We will also highlight other qualitative data in consideration with the numerical factors that may result to a significant change on our recommendation.

This paper will discuss and analyze the concepts of Activity- Based Costing (ABC) in the manufacturing industry. Specifically, the document will focus on General Motors (GM), and the innovation of one of their manufacturing facilities who used ABC to predict energy usage in the manufacturing of automobiles. The study yielded a successful ABC predictive energy model which provided a structure for competitive advantage for the corporation.

It consists of weighting and combining the weights of the ten factors and to evaluate implementing ABC. The potential benefits of ABC can be analyzed in advance along two separate dimensions. And there are ten mediating factors (Pricing Diversity, Support Diversity, Common Processes, Cost Allocation, Growth of Indirect Costs, Pricing Freedom, Fixed Expense Ratio, Strategic Considerations, Cost Reduction Effort, Analysis Frequency) can guide management in determining the answers. The fist five factors (PD, SD, CP, CA, FG) based on the probability. The second dimension of the model seeks to establish decisions. lY axis potential for ABC due to cost distortion---PD.SD.CP.CA.FG lX axis proclivity to use cost information in decision---PF.FE.SC.CR.AF To start management must analyze and responses to two key questions: 1. For a given organization, is it likely that ABC will produce costs that are significantly different from those that are generated with conventional accounting, and does it seem likely that those costs will be "better"? 2. If information that is considered "better" is generated by the system, will the new information change the dependent decisions made by the management? After finish these questions managers of company can discuses the ten factors that support or reject implementation. Finally, the combined weighted scores are plotted as a point on one of the four quadrants of a graph.Plotting the Answers--- Use Contingency Grid Method The steps in 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.

In fact, many of these PMS tools and technological innovations were transformed based on those traditional ones to better meet the organisation needs in the contemporary era. More than 30 popular cost and management accounting techniques have been introduced since 1950 (Refer to Table1). Abdel and Luther (2006) described that the most notable innovative management accounting techniques are Activity based costing (ABC), strategic management accounting and the BSC. Among all the modern management accounting tools and techniques, this paper focuses on BSC as a performance measurement system and will be discussed in the next section.

Essentially SMA falls within the management accounting umbrella. It is management accounting practices becoming strategic through its use within business activities through which strategy is enacted (Cuganesan et al, 2012). The term was coined originally by Simmonds who described it as a collection of management accounting information about the business and its competitors, which are then used in the development and maintenance of the

Process costing is a system which mostly practices by a company whereby the manager of the company wants to know the cash flow from one department to another. Process costing give a clarify information to managers, therefore this activities is very important.

Strategic Management—Advancing the role of the management accountant as a strategic partner in the organization.

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.