Professional Documents
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Chapter 4
Chapter 4
Costing systems
◦ Job Order Costing
◦ Process Costing
◦ Activity Based Costing
Decision Making
▪ Cost accounting provides the detailed cost information that management needs to
control current operations and plan for the future.
➢ Cost pool: A cost pool is a grouping of individual cost items possessing identical
nature. Cost pools can range from broad, such as all costs within a manufacturing
plant, to narrow, such as the costs of operating machine.
The cost to
produce a unit of
product includes: Manufacturing overhead
⚫Direct material must be mathematically
allocated to each unit of
⚫Direct labor product using a
predetermined overhead
⚫Manufacturing application rate.
overhead
◆ Key feature: Each job or batch has its own distinguishing characteristics.
◆ Measures costs for each completed job rather than for set time periods.
◆ When units are sold, the cost is transferred to Cost of Goods Sold.
► Hours worked
► Machine hours
► Any other activity that is an equitable base for applying overhead costs to
jobs
This means that for every dollar of direct labor, Wallace will assign
80 cents of manufacturing overhead to a job.
_______
When a job is
completed,
Wallace
summarizes the
costs and
completes the
job cost sheet.
◆ ABC System: More than one basis of allocating activity costs to products is
needed.
The data shows that under ABC, overhead costs are shifted from
the high-volume product (Ab Bench) to the low-volume product
(Ab Coaster). This shift results in more accurate costing for two
reasons.
The comparison shows that unit costs under traditional costing have
been significantly distorted.
Benefits of ABC
The primary benefit of ABC is more accurate product costing. Here’s why:
1. ABC leads to more cost pools being used to assign overhead costs to products.
ABC systems often provide better product cost data than traditional volume-
based systems, there are limitations:
1. ABC can be expensive to use.
◆ When more than one type of product is sold, the sales mix will remain constant.
Computation of
break-even
point in units.
DECISION RULE
A segment should be discontinued only if the company’s profit would
increase. This would only happen if the fixed cost savings exceed the lost
contribution margin.
Contribution Margin
Solution
Contribution margin lost if the
housewares line is dropped $ (20,000)
Performance planning
Providing a frame of reference
Investigating variations
Corrective action
Planning again
The Master Budget
Master Budget
Operating Financial
Decisions Decisions
Learning Objective 2
Provides a framework
#2 for judging performance
What are the Advantages of Budgets?
Motivates employees
#3 and managers
Promotes coordination
#4 and communication
Strategy, Planning, and Budgets
Long-run Long-run
Planning Budgets
Strategy
Analysis
Short-run Short-run
Planning Budgets
Time Coverage of Budgets
Budgets typically have a set time
period (month, quarter, year).
This time period can itself be broken
into subperiods.
The most frequently used budget
period is one year.
Businesses are increasingly using
rolling budgets.
Learning Objective 3
– production
– service
Types of Responsibility Centers
Cost center
Investment center
Profit center
Learning Objective 8