Activity-based costing (ABC) is a cost accounting concept that can be used by almost any corporation (manufacturing or service) to gain a competitive advantage through greater understanding of its product and process costs. This book shows how an organization can adopt ABC in a practical, cost-effective way without dismantling current cost information systems.

* A practical, cost-effective guide to ABC for small to medium companies. * Identifies the key cost related issues in organizations and shows how to develop a cost-flow structure that reflects the organization's cost behavior. * Feature an ongoing case study throughout the book documents the model-building process. * Provides a spreadsheet model blueprint that details data flows. * Shows how a cost model of an organization can be developed using basic spreadsheet software on a PC.

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject Business economics - Controlling, grade: 1,3, University of Applied Sciences Wildau (WIT Wildau), course: Managerial Accounting, 18 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Activity-based costing first gained publicity in the early 1980s. It was developed as a logical alternative to traditional cost management systems that tended to produce insufficient results when it came to allocating costs. Harvard Business School Professor Robert S. Kaplan was an early advocate of the ABC system. Due to a changing business world and strong competition, the cost structure in many companies changed, while facing an increased price pressure. When profit margins are decreasing, companies are focusing not only on external but also internal opportunities to improve their cost structures and to make hidden costs transparent. This lead to the introduction of Activity-based costing (ABC) as a new approach of process thinking to make the internal organization more flexible to react to changes in the production process and allocation of costs as well as to deal with overcapacities. This paper will focus on the ABC tool, which is aiming at transparency, efficiency increase and improvement of the given cost calculation systems. The ABC method enables management to optimize the enterprise with detailed information for a thorough decision making process. ABC is a method for developing cost estimates, based on the activities used within the production process per cost object. To develop a cost estimate the most important activities within the production cycle - the cost drivers - need to be identified. The activity must be definable and measured in units, e.g. number of man hours. After all activities for producing the product are known, a cost estimate is prepared for each activity. These individual cost estimates contain all labour, materials and equipment costs, including overhead, for each activity. Each complete individual e

By now, most companies know that activity-based costing, an innovative accounting system that breaks down overhead far more precisely than old-fashioned systems do, can be used to trim waste, improve service, and make better product-mix and pricing decisions. Yet the actual design and implementation of a successful ABC system remains largely a mystery for many companies. Analyzes the experiences of eight real-life companies who took on the challenge of implementing an ABC system, revealing the mistakes, successes, and ultimate triumphs that resulted in each case. Winner of the Notable Contribution to Management Accounting Literature Award.

Submitted Assignment from the year 2015 in the subject Business economics - Accounting and Taxes, grade: 60, University of Wolverhampton, course: MA in Management, language: English, abstract: The aim of this paper is to give critical analysis and applicability of Activity Based Costing (ABC) methodology. The paper is divided into three main parts. The first part identifies key techniques and approach in ABC costing. The second part assesses the relevance of ABC, based on current debates and study done. The third and final section assesses the applicability of ABC costing to small and medium sized enterprises.

Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject Business economics - Accounting and Taxes, grade: 1.3, University of the West of England, Bristol (Bristol Business School (University of the West of England)), course: Internes Rechnungswesen/ Management Accounting, 15 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Every accounting student of the past sixty years has learned about inventory costing- a bookkeeping procedure that manufacturing accountants follow to separate the production expense of an accounting period from the cost of manufactured product inventories at the end of the period. (Johnson and Kaplan, 1991, p. 130) This technique of valuing inventory should, although often practiced, not be used for managerial decision making though. It oversimplifies the consumption of overhead costs by products, services and customers and therefore leads to distorted cost information. Activity-based costing (ABC), developed by single manufacturing firms in the early 1980s, seems to provide more reliable information. The second part of this work describes the concept of ABC by summarizing the arguments of two pioneers in this field. In their book "Relevance Lost: The Rise and Fall of Management Accounting", first published in 1987, H. Thomas Johnson and Robert S. Kaplan (1991) examine the traditions of management accountting and describe possible improvements. In part three the developments of ABC in the last 20 years are described by reviewing a choice of important literature. Part four then shows the impact that ABC had on implementing companies. The conclusion, part five, contains an assessment of the used literature and an evaluation of whether the critic of traditional management accounting has been overcome by ABC.

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