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Activity-based costing records the costs that traditional cost accounting does not do. The overhead costs assigned to each activity comprise an activity cost pool. From a historical perspective the practices systematized by ABC were first demonstrated by Frederick W. Taylor in Principles of Scientific Management in 1911 (1911.
A cost object is a term used primarily in cost accounting to describe something to which costs are assigned. [1] Common examples of cost objects are product lines, geographic territories, customers, departments or anything else for which management would like to quantify cost. [2] The use of cost objects is common within activity based costing ...
While (ABC) Activity-based costing may be able to pinpoint the cost of each activity and resources into the ultimate product, the process could be tedious, costly and subject to errors. As it is a tool for a more accurate way of allocating fixed costs into a product, these fixed costs do not vary according to each month's production volume.
Activity-based costing establishes relationships between overhead costs and activities so that costs can be more precisely allocated to products, services, or customer segments. Activity-based management focuses on managing activities to reduce costs and improve customer value. Kaplan and Cooper [1] divide ABM into operational and strategic:
The Activity Based Costing (ABC) approach relates indirect cost to the activities that drive them to be incurred. Activity Based Costing is based on the belief that activities cause costs and therefore a link should be established between activities and product. The cost drivers thus are the link between the activities and the cost of the product.
Activity-based costing is a model to assign indirect costs into direct ones. [7] To use this model in the context of supply chains, there must be consistent defined and delimited cost and performance data. Since many companies participate in more than one supply chain, standardization across the sector is beneficial.
The behavior of both costs and revenues is linear throughout the relevant range of activity. (This assumption precludes the concept of volume discounts on either purchased materials or sales.) Costs can be classified accurately as either fixed or variable. Changes in activity are the only factors that affect costs.
Both lifecycle costing and activity-based costing recognize that, in the typical modern factory, the avoidance of disruptive events (such as machine breakdowns and quality control failures) is of far greater importance than (for example) reducing the costs of raw materials. Activity-based costing also de-emphasizes direct labor as a cost driver ...