In order to "cost" activity pools, ABC identifies activity units that are cost drivers for each pool. The total cost of for the activity pool "purchase orders," for instance, is driven by the number of purchase orders processed while the total cost for activity pool "machine set ups" is driven by the number of set ups. Tables 5A and 5B, below show a cost driver (CD) unit cost for each activity pool: one machine set up, for instance, is found to require $1,500 in labor, materials, energy, and other resources.
Tables 5A, moreover, shows the number of CD units (activity units) used for product A, while Table 5B shows these figures for product B. From the known cost of each CD unit, a total cost can be assigned for each product for each activity pool, as shown in the rightmost column of Tables 5A and 5B. In ABC, assigning cost totals to activity pools in this way, based on cost driver units, is called stage-1 allocation, or batch-level allocation.
Activity Pool Cost Driver (CD)
Activity Units CD
Unit Cost Total Activity
Product A Total Indir
Cost (A)
17. Purchase orders No of purchase orders $1,800 75 $135,000
18. Machine set ups No of setups $1,500 150 $225,000
19. Product
packaging No of product
packages packed $0.20 900,000 $180,000
20. Machine testing
& calibration No of tests $100 1,000 $100,000
21. Maintenance
& cleaning No of batch runs $1,150 200 $230,000
Total $870,000
Table 5A. ABC Stage-1 allocation (batch level allocation) for product A: Activity pools, cost drivers, cost per cost driver unit, and total cost for these activities.
Activity Pool Cost Driver (CD) CD
Unit Cost Total Activity
Product B Total Indir
Cost (B)
17. Purchase orders No of purchase orders $1,800 25 $45,000
18. Machine set ups No of setups $1,500 100 $150,000
19. Product
packaging No of product
packages packed $0.20 500,000 $100,000
20. Machine testing
& calibration No of tests $100 2,000 $200,000
21. Maintenance
& cleaning No of batch runs $1,150 50 $57,500
Total $552,500
Table 5B. ABC Stage-1 allocation (batch level allocation) for Product B: Activity pools, cost drivers, cost per cost driver unit, and total cost for these activities.
When each product's activity pool cost totals are known, the accountants can move on to calculating the cost per product unit, as shown below in Table 5C. These product unit costs are found by dividing the activity pool cost totals by the number of product units. The process of finding product unit costs is called stage-2 allocation, or product level allocation.
Activity Pool Total Indirect Cost
Product A
[From Table 5A] Cost per product unit
Product A Total Indirect cost Product B
[From Table 5B] Cost per product unit
Product A Total indirect cost
A+B
17. Purchase orders $135,000 $0.15 $45,000 $0.02 $180,000
18. Machine set ups $225,000 $0.25 $150,000 $0.07 $150,000
19. Product packaging $180,000 $0.20 $100,000 $0.05 $280,000
20. Machine testing
& calibration $100,000 $0.11 $200,000 $0.09 $300,000
21. Maintenance
& cleaning $230,000 $0.26 $57,500 $0.03 $57,500
Total $870,000 $0.97 $552,500 $0.26 $1,422,500
Table 5C. Stage-2 allocation in ABC: Allocating activity pool costs to individual product units. The cost per product unit figures for product A and product B (second and fourth columns) are derived from the cost sums for each activity pool (first and third columns) divided by the number of product units produced and sold for each product (Table 2, line 1).
The total product unit costs for each product correspond to the total indirect costs for each product from the traditional costing approach. Table 6 below shows how these costs contribute to the new version of profitability calculations for each product.
Products Compared Product A Product B Total
22. Units produced and
sold [Table 2, line 1] 900,000 2,100,000 3,000,000
23. Total direct costs
[Table 2, line 8] $1,125,000 $2,100,000 $3,225,000
24. Total overhead costs
[Table 5C, line 21 ] $870,000 $552,500 $1,422,500
25. Revenues per unit
[ Table 2, line 2 ] $3.00 $2.00
26. Direct costs / unit
[ = 23 / 22 ] $1.25 $1.00
27. Overhead costs / unit
[ = 24 / 22 ] $0.97 $0.26
28. Gross profit / unit
[ = 25 −26 − 27 ] $0.78 $0.26
29. Gross profit margin
[ = 28 / 25 ] 26.1% 36.8%
Table 6. Gross profit and gross margin calculation for each product, using activity based costing for indirect, or overhead costs.
Conclusions: Activity based costing example.
• Estimated Indirect (overhead) cost per unit is quite different for each product, unlike the traditional costing example above where indirect costs per unit were the same for both products. This approach recognizes that product A used more activity pool resources than product B.
• On a per unit basis, the this costing approach finds product B more profitable than product A. The gross margin rate of 36.8% for B compares with a gross margin of 26.1% for A.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of activity based costing, compared to traditional costing?
Table 7 below shows the per-unit profitability estimates for each product from the examples above.
Product Profitability
(Gross Profit Margin) Product A Product B
Traditional cost allocation
(Production volume based allocation) 42.5% 26.3%
Activity based costing approach 26.1% 36.8%
Table 7. Comparison of profitability estimates from two different costing methods. Traditional costing shows product A more profitable than product B. ABC based costing shows the reverse. These differences result from the different treatment of overhead costs.
The tables and examples above illustrate some key differences between the costing methods:
Data and analysis
• Activity based costing requires detailed knowledge of the activities and resources that go into overhead (or "indirect") support work.
• Traditional cost accounting (production volume based allocation) requires only a total overhead cost and a simple allocation rule.
Overhead components and products: Differentiation vs. aggregation
• ABC recognizes that individual overhead components can be distributed differently for different products. One product may consume relatively more maintenance resources, for instance, while another product may consume relatively less maintenance resources but relatively more machine set up resources.
• Traditional cost accounting typically aggregates overhead components into fewer categories, or even a single category, and uses a single allocation rate for all products.
Direct vs. indirect measurement
• Activity based costing approaches overhead costs essentially as direct costs, in that cost estimates reflect actual cost driver usage for each product. These costs, in turn can be reasonably be apportioned to individual product units.
• In traditional cost accounting (production volume based allocation), the total overhead cost is known accurately, but the distribution of that total to individual products is based on an indirect measure of that cost to different products is based on an indirect measure.
Costing accuracy vs. the cost of costing
For the profitability figures shown in Table 7 above, the activity based costing results may be taken as the more accurate results—more closely reflecting the "true" production costs of products A and B—than the profitability figures from the traditional costing approach. Whether or not the improved accuracy justifies the higher cost of applying this costing method, however, is a question management will have to investigate and answer before committing to a comprehensive new approach to costing.
What is activity based management ABM?
ABC first appeared in the mid 1980s. Since that time, the percentage of companies and other organizations using the approach has increased more or less continuously but, as mentioned earlier, nearly three decades after it first appeared, the majority of companies and organizations still do not use activity based costing, and still do not practice activity based management.
The slow increase in adoption rates is no doubt the result of two underlying trends that advance continuously but slowly: (1) the increasing availability and capabilities of costing implementation resources, and (2) the increasing extension of the approach into new areas of application, to address a wider range of management issues.
Regarding implementation, activity based costing requires detailed and complete information on specific activities that go into specific products, services, and tasks, as well as detailed and complete information on the resources consumed by these activities (including time, labor, and other goods and services). Implementation in large, complex organizations is thus a labor-intensive and data-intensive undertaking. Since the mid 1980s, however, ABC has become more accessible and more affordable to many companies through
• Recent improvements in costing software
• The increasing availability of data from complex, comprehensive software systems, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, manufacturing resource planning (MRP) systems, and customer relationship management (CRM) systems,
When first introduced, the obvious benefits of ABC were most readily seen in product manufacturing settings, such as the one illustrated in the two numerical examples above. From the start, it was clear that in such settings, the approach was superior to traditional cost accounting for the purposes of:
• Identifying truly profitable and truly unprofitable products.
• Identifying and eliminating unnecessary costs.
• Identifying and distinguishing between true value-add activities and non-value add activities.
• Pricing p
النتائج (
العربية) 1:
[نسخ]نسخ!
من أجل "التكلفة" برك النشاط، يحدد ABC وحدات النشاط التي هي تكلفة لكل تجمع السائقين. التكلفة الإجمالية لتجمع النشاط "أوامر الشراء،" على سبيل المثال، مدفوعة من قبل العدد أوامر الشراء المجهزة بينما التكلفة الإجمالية لنشاط تجمع "آلة مجموعة يو بي إس" مدفوعة من قبل عدد مجموعة يو بي إس. جداول 5A و 5B، دون إظهار تكلفة وحدة تكلفة سائق (CD) لكل تجمع النشاط: يوجد آلة واحد، على سبيل المثال، تتطلب دولار 1,500 في العمل والمواد، والطاقة، والموارد الأخرى.جداول 5A، علاوة على ذلك، يظهر العدد من مؤتمر نزع السلاح وحدات (النشاط) المستخدمة للمنتج، بينما يبين الجدول 5 (ب) هذه الأرقام للمنتج باء من التكلفة المعروفة لكل وحدة القرص المضغوط، يمكن تعيينها بتكلفة إجمالية لكل منتج لكل تجمع النشاط، كما هو مبين في العمود الموجود في أقصى اليمين من الجداول 5A و 5B. في أي بي سي، يسمى تعيين إجماليات التكاليف لتجمعات النشاط بهذه الطريقة، استناداً إلى تكلفة وحدات التشغيل، تخصيص المرحلة 1، أو تخصيص مستوى المجموعة. نشاط تجمع تكلفة برنامج التشغيل (CD)نشاط وحدات القرص المضغوطتكلفة الوحدة إجمالي النشاطالمنتج بإجمالي Indirالتكلفة (A)17-شراء أوامر أي أوامر شراء دولار 1,800 75 دولار 135,00018-آلة يرفع أي الأجهزة 1,500 دولار 150 دولار 225,00019-المنتج التعبئة والتغليف لا للمنتجالحزم وجبات 0.20 $ 900,000 $180,00020-جهاز اختبار & اختبارات المعايرة لا من 100 1,000 دولار مبلغ 100,00021-صيانة & تنظيف أي دفعة تدير دولار 1,150 200 دولار 230,000المجموع 870,000 دولارTable 5A. ABC Stage-1 allocation (batch level allocation) for product A: Activity pools, cost drivers, cost per cost driver unit, and total cost for these activities.Activity Pool Cost Driver (CD) CDUnit Cost Total ActivityProduct B Total IndirCost (B)17. Purchase orders No of purchase orders $1,800 25 $45,00018. Machine set ups No of setups $1,500 100 $150,00019. Product packaging No of productpackages packed $0.20 500,000 $100,00020. Machine testing & calibration No of tests $100 2,000 $200,00021. Maintenance & cleaning No of batch runs $1,150 50 $57,500Total $552,500Table 5B. ABC Stage-1 allocation (batch level allocation) for Product B: Activity pools, cost drivers, cost per cost driver unit, and total cost for these activities.When each product's activity pool cost totals are known, the accountants can move on to calculating the cost per product unit, as shown below in Table 5C. These product unit costs are found by dividing the activity pool cost totals by the number of product units. The process of finding product unit costs is called stage-2 allocation, or product level allocation.Activity Pool Total Indirect CostProduct A[From Table 5A] Cost per product unitProduct A Total Indirect cost Product B[From Table 5B] Cost per product unitProduct A Total indirect costA+B17. Purchase orders $135,000 $0.15 $45,000 $0.02 $180,00018. Machine set ups $225,000 $0.25 $150,000 $0.07 $150,00019. Product packaging $180,000 $0.20 $100,000 $0.05 $280,00020. Machine testing & calibration $100,000 $0.11 $200,000 $0.09 $300,00021. Maintenance & cleaning $230,000 $0.26 $57,500 $0.03 $57,500Total $870,000 $0.97 $552,500 $0.26 $1,422,500Table 5C. Stage-2 allocation in ABC: Allocating activity pool costs to individual product units. The cost per product unit figures for product A and product B (second and fourth columns) are derived from the cost sums for each activity pool (first and third columns) divided by the number of product units produced and sold for each product (Table 2, line 1).The total product unit costs for each product correspond to the total indirect costs for each product from the traditional costing approach. Table 6 below shows how these costs contribute to the new version of profitability calculations for each product.Products Compared Product A Product B Total22. Units produced and sold [Table 2, line 1] 900,000 2,100,000 3,000,00023. Total direct costs[Table 2, line 8] $1,125,000 $2,100,000 $3,225,00024. Total overhead costs[Table 5C, line 21 ] $870,000 $552,500 $1,422,50025. Revenues per unit[ Table 2, line 2 ] $3.00 $2.00 26. Direct costs / unit[ = 23 / 22 ] $1.25 $1.00 27. Overhead costs / unit[ = 24 / 22 ] $0.97 $0.26 28. Gross profit / unit[ = 25 −26 − 27 ] $0.78 $0.26 29. Gross profit margin[ = 28 / 25 ] 26.1% 36.8% Table 6. Gross profit and gross margin calculation for each product, using activity based costing for indirect, or overhead costs.Conclusions: Activity based costing example.• Estimated Indirect (overhead) cost per unit is quite different for each product, unlike the traditional costing example above where indirect costs per unit were the same for both products. This approach recognizes that product A used more activity pool resources than product B.• On a per unit basis, the this costing approach finds product B more profitable than product A. The gross margin rate of 36.8% for B compares with a gross margin of 26.1% for A.What are the advantages and disadvantages of activity based costing, compared to traditional costing?Table 7 below shows the per-unit profitability estimates for each product from the examples above.Product Profitability(Gross Profit Margin) Product A Product BTraditional cost allocation(Production volume based allocation) 42.5% 26.3%Activity based costing approach 26.1% 36.8%Table 7. Comparison of profitability estimates from two different costing methods. Traditional costing shows product A more profitable than product B. ABC based costing shows the reverse. These differences result from the different treatment of overhead costs.The tables and examples above illustrate some key differences between the costing methods:Data and analysis• Activity based costing requires detailed knowledge of the activities and resources that go into overhead (or "indirect") support work. • Traditional cost accounting (production volume based allocation) requires only a total overhead cost and a simple allocation rule.منتجات ومكونات النفقات العامة: التمايز مقابل التجميع• أية بي سي تسلم تلك النفقات العامة الفردية يمكن توزيع مكونات مختلفة لمنتجات مختلفة. منتج واحد قد تستهلك موارد الصيانة أكثر نسبيا، على سبيل المثال، بينما منتج آخر قد تستهلك موارد الصيانة أقل نسبيا لكن الجهاز نسبيا أكثر إعداد الموارد. • محاسبة التكاليف التقليدية عادة بتجميع مكونات النفقات العامة إلى فئات أقل، أو حتى فئة واحدة، ويستخدم بمعدل تخصيص واحد لجميع المنتجات. مباشرة مقابل القياس غير المباشر• النشاط على أساس تكاليف النفقات العامة النهج أساسا كتكاليف مباشرة، وفي أن تعكس تقديرات تكلفة استخدام برنامج التشغيل التكلفة الفعلية لكل منتج. هذه التكاليف، بدوره أن يكون معقول يمكن وحدات المنتجات المخصصة للفرد.• في محاسبة التكاليف التقليدية (توزيع على أساس حجم الإنتاج)، التكاليف الإجمالية المعروف بدقة، ولكن توزيع هذا الإجمالي للمنتجات الفردية يرتكز على تدبير غير مباشرة التي تستند التكلفة للمنتجات المختلفة تدبير غير مباشرة.دقة التكاليف مقابل تكلفة حساب التكاليفFor the profitability figures shown in Table 7 above, the activity based costing results may be taken as the more accurate results—more closely reflecting the "true" production costs of products A and B—than the profitability figures from the traditional costing approach. Whether or not the improved accuracy justifies the higher cost of applying this costing method, however, is a question management will have to investigate and answer before committing to a comprehensive new approach to costing.What is activity based management ABM? ABC first appeared in the mid 1980s. Since that time, the percentage of companies and other organizations using the approach has increased more or less continuously but, as mentioned earlier, nearly three decades after it first appeared, the majority of companies and organizations still do not use activity based costing, and still do not practice activity based management. The slow increase in adoption rates is no doubt the result of two underlying trends that advance continuously but slowly: (1) the increasing availability and capabilities of costing implementation resources, and (2) the increasing extension of the approach into new areas of application, to address a wider range of management issues.Regarding implementation, activity based costing requires detailed and complete information on specific activities that go into specific products, services, and tasks, as well as detailed and complete information on the resources consumed by these activities (including time, labor, and other goods and services). Implementation in large, complex organizations is thus a labor-intensive and data-intensive undertaking. Since the mid 1980s, however, ABC has become more accessible and more affordable to many companies through • Recent improvements in costing software • The increasing availability of data from complex, comprehensive software systems, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, manufacturing resource planning (MRP) systems, and customer relationship management (CRM) systems, When first introduced, the obvious benefits of ABC were most readily seen in product manufacturing settings, such as the one illustrated in the two numerical examples above. From the start, it was clear that in such settings, the approach was superior to traditional cost accounting for the purposes of:• Identifying truly profitable and truly unprofitable products.• Identifying and eliminating unnecessary costs.• Identifying and distinguishing between true value-add activities and non-value add activities.• Pricing p
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