Activity Based Costing Essays (Examples)

Activity-Based Costing and AIS

Activity-Based Costing (ABC) is an accounting method that identifies the activities a company carries out and then assigns indirect costs (overhead) to products.

Activity-based costing shows the relationships between the activities, the costs, and the products, and correctly associates the lion's share of the resources used with the actual production or provision of services.

The recognition of these relationships enables the indirect costs to be assigned to products in a more rational, less arbitrary manner than traditional methods that would allocate a broad percentage of costs to products without any true measure of the accuracy of the approach.

By using activity-based costing, a company can treat more indirect costs as direct costs. This is important because some products or services consume more indirect costs than do other products or services.

In effect, the activity-based costing enables an accountant to trace the resource consumption and costs, which…

References

Romney, M.B., and Steinbart, P.J. (2009). Accounting information systems. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.

____. Accounting Information Systems: Information on Collection, Storage and Processing of Financial and Accounting Data. Accounting Information Systems.

The accounting coach. Retrieved  http://www.accountingcoach.com/activity-based-costing/explanation/1

The applicability of Activity-Based Costing for decision making is directly linked to the influences that ABC has over process control. In this order of ideas, by better identifying the incurred costs or the overhead, managers can better monitor and control the evolution of products, prices, costs and consequently, profits. ABC identifies the costs incurred by each item in terms of resources consumed. Therefore, with the aid of ABC, organizational managements have the ability to control resource allocation.

Activity-Based Costing reveals yet another significant feature: it has the ability to evaluate the costs of not producing an item. This basically means that with the aid of the ABC, managers are able to know how much they have lost due to machine malfunctioning, product damaging, increased inventory costs or time spent waiting for a machine component to be replaced. "Activity-Based Costing therefore gives not only much better cost control, but increasingly, it…

Works Cited

Barnat, R., 2005, Strategic Control: A New Perspective, Strategic Control,  http://www.strategic-control.24xls.com/en139last  accessed on October 21, 2008

Chellasamy, P., Ligy, V.K., 2008, Activity-Based Costing - a Tool for Decision Making, Fibre 2 Fashion,  http://www.fibre2fashion.com/industry-article/7/670/activity-based-costing-a-tool-for-decision-making1.asplast  accessed on October 21, 2008

Cooper, R., Kaplan, R.S., 1998, Design of Cost Management Systems, 2nd Edition, Prentice Hall

Drucker, P.F., 2006, Classic Drucker, Harvard Business School Press

STANDARD-ASED COSTING AND PERFORMANCE MEASURES FOR TODAY'S MANUFACTURING ENVIRONMENT

This paper outlines the various defect of the standard-based costing method and how they do not effectively measure manufacturing environment of today. It has 8 sources in Turabian style.

Cost control is needed by businesses to plan the actual cost it might incur on the production of certain commodities. The budget is an overall costing system but sub-division is needed if and when the company requires detailed cost structure of the department. This is necessary for achieving the overall goals of the organization.

In production organizations, such as manufacturing companies, the basic concern of the management is to have smooth operations with the least cost possible. There the existence of cost is measured by the tangible output each component of the department produces. Income is compared to the cost incurred. A system that is set for measuring the performance level of…

Bibliography

Davies, Ieuan, 03-01-1997. Are we going in the right direction? (production management techniques). Vol. 75, Management Accounting (British), pp 52(1). Lucas, Mike, Standard costing and its role in today's manufacturing environment.. Vol. 75, Management Accounting (British), 04-01-1997, pp 32(3).

Bear, Robert; Mills, Roger; Schmid, Felix, 12-01-1994. Product costing in advanced technology environments. (cost accounting in manufacturing environments). Vol. 72, Management Accounting (British), pp 20(3).

Lucas, Mike, 04-01-1997. Standard costing and its role in today's manufacturing environment.. Vol. 75, Management Accounting (British), pp 32(3).

Dugdale, David; Jones, Colwyn, 05-01-1996. Accounting for throughput.(part 2, practice). Vol. 74, Management Accounting (British), pp 38(5).

In Thompson's version of a bureaupathology, the actions of individuals do not advance society or themselves, but rather the goals and objectives of the bureaucracy itself, which may not even benefit society as a whole. Individual members become subordinates to authority positions that often find themselves overly arrogant, and potentially even corrupt because of the lack of accountability other members of the bureaucracy hold them to.

There are a number of examples which O'Hara gives of failed strategies that clearly resemble Thompson's idea of a bureaupathology. First, in the prologue, O'Hara discusses Hoover's FBI and how it failed to adhere to the very laws it was supposed to protect with arrogance and exaggerated sense of power leading Hoover to take on personal vendettas, secretly spy on American citizens, and negatively influence the process of American politics. Moreover, O'Hara provides another example of the Philadelphia Police Department and its correlation to…

Joint costing systems should bear in mind the legal constraints on the use of such systems, and should provide accurate information to managers in order to be most useful in the managerial accounting context.

Firms need to remain competitive, which indicates that the market will set prices to some degree. This implies that firms can make better decisions with respect to what projects/products they wish to pursue by understanding the cost structure of the product. If the product is not viable at the cost at which it can be produced, then the firm can improve profitability by dumping the product.

orks Cited:

Banham, R. (2000). Off target? CFO Magazine. Retrieved April 5, 2011 from http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/2990860/c_3046531?f=magazine_alsoinside

Frederick, S. (2011).

The persuasive power of opportunity costs. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved April 5, 2011 from http://hbr.org/2011/01/column-the-persuasive-power-of-opportunity-costs/ar/1

Katz, D. (2002). Activity-based costing (ABC). CFO Magazine. Retrieved April 5, 2011 from http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/3007694

McKinsey & Co.…

Works Cited:

Banham, R. (2000). Off target? CFO Magazine. Retrieved April 5, 2011 from  http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/2990860/c_3046531?f=magazine_alsoinside 

Frederick, S. (2011).

The persuasive power of opportunity costs. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved April 5, 2011 from  http://hbr.org/2011/01/column-the-persuasive-power-of-opportunity-costs/ar/1 

Katz, D. (2002). Activity-based costing (ABC). CFO Magazine. Retrieved April 5, 2011 from  http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/3007694

Another example of pure job costing is web development, where the processes themselves vary hugely from project to project, meaning the cost and time involved also varies.

esponse

Dosch & Wilson (2010) do seem to do a good job of defining job and process costing, and the person who posted this seems to have understood these definitions fairly well in the abstract -- that is, the definitions provided seem reasonable and the application of these definitions to businesses chosen by the poster are explained in a way that clearly links them to these definition. At the same, the poster seems to have had some trouble accurately identifying companies where job costing might be employed, despite grasping the abstract technicalities of the definition of job costing. While it is likely that an individual laborer might be able to identify that they worked on a particular section of an airplane or wall…

References

Chan, Y. (1993). Improving hospital cost accounting with activity-based costing. Health care management review 18(1).

Dosch, J., & Wilson, J. (2010). Process Costing and Management Accounting in Today's

Business Environment. Strategic Finance, 92(2), 37-43. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

Managerial Analysis

&D activities fall into four pools with the following annual costs.

Market analysis $1,050,000

Product design 2,350,000

Product development 3,600,000

Prototype testing 1,400,000

Total

Activities Cost Drivers Estimated Drivers

Market analysis Hours of analysis 15,000 hours

Product design Number of designs 2,500 designs

Product development Number of products 90 products

Prototype testing Number of tests 500 tests

(a) Compute the activity-based overhead rate for each activity cost pool

Activity-based overhead rate = total budget overhead / basis

= 1,050,000 / 15,000

= $70 per hour (Market Analysis)

Activity-based overhead rate = total budget overhead/basis

= 2,350,000 / 2,500

= $940 per design (Product Design Number)

Activity-based overhead rate = total budget overhead/basis

= 3,600,000 /

=$40,000 per product (Product development number)

Activity-based overhead rate = total budget overhead/basis

= 1,400,000 / 500

= $2,800 per test (Number of tests)

(b) How much cost charged to an in-house manufacturing…

References

Lutilsky, I., & Dragija, M. (2012). Activity-Based Costing As A Means To Full Costing

Possibilities And Constraints For European Universities. Management: Journal Of

Contemporary Management Issues, 17(1), 33-57.

Ittner, C.D., Lanen, W.N., & Larcker, D.F. (2002). The Association between Activity-

Product Costing systems (ABC, job costing, put costing, .) advanced topic managerial accounting the thesis statemenit a position body paper show evidence support position. The paper discuss opposite point view discuss position valid.

Product costing systems

Product costing system is a management tool which identifies the actual cost of producing each product. It identifies the profits and loss which can be gained or incurred on each product, hence giving companies the opportunity of identifying and promoting of profitable product while dropping, re-pricing or redesigning of unprofitable products Brierley, 2008.

Product costing is a highly sensitive area for managerial accountants, recently, most of them have changed their focus such that they give their attention to appropriate treatment costs which are directly associated with resources that are committed to support activities, which within the company do not vary proportionally to production once the initial capacities have been set. In such as an…

References

Brierley, J.A. (2008). Toward an Understanding of the Sophistication of Product Costing Systems. [Article]. Journal of Management Accounting Research, 20, 61-78.

Brierley, J.A. (2010). The determinants of overhead assignment sophistication in product costing systems. [Article]. Journal of Corporate Accounting & Finance (Wiley), 21(4), 69-75. doi: 10.1002/jcaf.20597

Brierley, J.A. (2011). A Comparison of the Product Costing Practices of Large and Small- to Medium-Sized Enterprises: A Survey of British Manufacturing Firms. [Article]. International Journal of Management, 28(4), 184-193.

Drudy, & M. Tayles. (2005). The British Accounting Review Explicating the design of overhead absorption procedures in UK organizations, 37(1), 47 -- 84.

Many managers who already are involved with competition in time-based industries realize that manufacturing strategy is often influenced by the traditional cost management system and this proves to be a mistake as time management system might have worked better (Hutchinson, 2007, p. 31). In the manufacturing sector, the traditional managerial cost accounting reporting system is still used but as many managers are ready to adopt the advanced manufacturing strategies and technologies, the managers object to the inclusion of cost accounting system as the only decision criterion in manufacturing (Hutchinson, 2007, p. 32).

The managerial cost accounting reporting system should also involve the activity of performance measurement that provide an impressive influence on the performance and motivation of the workers. Furthermore, it also provides extra information for the managers to take proper decisions that may help in achieving the pre-determined organizational goals to achieve future prospects and profits (Maskell, Baggaley, 2001,…

References

Alnoor, Bhimani., 2003. Management Accounting in the Digital Economy, Oxford University Press: Oxford.

Brian, Maskell H; Bruce, Baggaley L., 2001. Future of Management Accounting in the 21st Century, Journal of Cost Management, 15(5), pp: 24-32.

Dale, Geiger R., 1995. The Emerging Need for Managerial Cost Accounting, The Government Accountants Journal 44(3), pp: 46-53.

George, Joseph., 2006. Understanding Management Accounting Techniques in the Context of Organizational Change, Management Accounting Quarterly 7(4), pp: 24-32.

Q1. Explain the differences between cost-effectiveness and performance management. Which performance elements are essential for assessing financial soundness of a nonprofit?

Although sound financial performance is clearly critical for an organization to flourish, cutting costs is not synonymous with performance management itself. An organization can be maximizing its cost effectiveness but not necessarily its performance. Performance management sets specific goals for employees. Goals must be measurable to be clear and effective but not necessarily tangible in nature. “Performance management is a whole work system that begins when a job is defined as needed” (Heathfield, 2018, par.3). It starts with the hiring process, beginning with an effective job description of each employment position. Each employment position should be linked to specific organizational needs. This is followed up by training and monitoring that evaluates the candidate’s performance over time based on those needs. Presumably the performance markers are also linked to financial…

Profit Analysis and Costing for the 21st Century

Value costing is about looking at the different aspects of a business paying particular attention to the opportunity cost they represent, how much they are likely to financially benefit a firm, and how much they are likely to cost it. Through this analysis, it is possible to determine the parts of the business that function the most efficiently and locate the parts that do not.

It is thought that value costing is no longer relevant because business has become far more complex than the traditional format, and with the rise of the internet and the increase in ebusiness, more and more factors must be added to the equation. It is also though that this form of costing is not only too simplistic, but takes too long to put into practice, and harder still to gain any meaningful results from. Value costing tries…

References

Stratton, W.O; Descroches, D.; Lawson, R.A.; Hatch, T. (2009) "Activity-Based Costing: Is it Still Relevan?" Management Accounting Quarterly

Cost-Volume-Profit Analysis (2004) Retrieved June 20th, 2011 from: www.wiley.com/college/sc/eldenburg

Luther, R.; O'Donovan, B (1998) "Cost Volume Profit Analysis and the Theory of Constraints" Journal of Cost Management: 16-21

Gupta, K.M; Gunasekaran, A. (2005) "Costing in New Enterprise Environment: A Challenge for Managerial Accounting Researchers and Practitioners" Managerial Auditing Journal Vol.20 Iss. 4

The notes in the around the Activity box are actions needing fixed at the present time such as detecting allocation and costs and most importantly the priorities of the hospital's maintenance.

The diagram then has a box drawn below labeled objects in both methods, yet these objects are defined to ABC by tracing activity drivers because it represents products/services and customers while the current method looks at only products and services of pharmacy maintenance repairs which is derived from the custom way where allocations such as the direct cost of supplies, labor, administration on the basis of square footage. The focus is on costs vs. Activity-Based Costing and cost cannot control expenditures, yet it in comparison to cost accounting current at Jumper Hospital, it will permit the facility to see the what they do have control of, what has been done including the management that provided regularly or on a…

References

Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council. (2003, January). Pharmaceuticals: their role in the cost of health care. Retrieved from http://www/phc4.org/reports/issue_briefs/docs/pharmcom.pdf

WiseGeek. (2011). What is cost allocation? Retrieved from  http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-cost-allocatioin.htm

Direct costs are those that can be "attributed to the production of specific goods or services" (Investopedia, 2013). They can be labor, materials or other expenses. In contrast, indirect costs are those that cannot be directly attributed -- at least not easily -- to a specific product or service. For the most part, identifying direct costs is a straightforward, but occasionally there are pitfalls that can emerge.

One pitfall when analyzing direct costs is to attribute all costs as direct costs, on the basis of how a single cost item breaks down. For example, if direct materials are allocated to products based on the allocation of direct labor costs. A two product company could allocate direct labor 40-60, and then use that split to allocate direct materials costs. That would be risky, because there might not be a connection between the two products with respect to their usage of labor…

Works Cited:

Investopedia. (2013). Direct costs. Iinvestopedia. Retrieved March 2, 2013 from  http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/directcost.asp#axzz2MSmrwEGN 

Johnson, R. (2013). Traditional costing vs. activity-based costing. Houston Chronicle. Retrieved March 2, 2013 from  http://smallbusiness.chron.com/traditional-costing-vs.-activitybased-costing-33724.html

Direct cost is a cost that is involved specifically and directly in the production of a good or service (No author, 2013). For example, in the production of a hamburger direct costs would be the ingredients. If the person cooking the burger only cooks burgers, and does one burger per hour (just an example), then the direct labor cost of that burger would be one hour's worth of wages. Sometimes, however, it can be more difficult to determine the direct cost of producing a good or service, and that is where the risk of errors comes into play.

For example all costs can be taken as direct costs. This is a common error. There is a logical slippery slope involved in attributing costs. So for example, our burger flipper might flip an average of 40 burgers in an hour. The company might be tempted to average that wage over the…

Works Cited:

No author (2013). Direct costs. Iinvestopedia. Retrieved March 2, 2013 from  http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/directcost.asp#axzz2MSmrwEGN 

McIntosh, K. (2013). Advantages and disadvantages of absorption costing. eHow. Retrieved March 10, 2013 from http://www.ehow.com/info_8180267_advantages-disadvantages-absorption-costing.html

Peavler, R. (2013). Direct and indirect costs and their effect on pricing your product. About.com. Retrieved March 10, 2013 from  http://bizfinance.about.com/od/pricingyourproduct/a/Direct-And-Indirect-Costs-And-Their-Effect-On-Pricing-Your-Product.htm

accounting important success firm? What methods cost accounting ? The paper (a) identify main issues chosen area, (b) reference learning occurred, (c) build class activities incidents facilitated learning understanding, (d) present specific current / future applications relevance typical workplace.

Cost accounting -- definition, importance, methods

The modern day society is constantly presenting the economic agent with more numerous and more pressing challenges. In order to face them and emerge as a competitive institution, firms develop and implement a wide array of strategies, such as creating customer value, developing the skills of the staff members, establishing strategic partnerships or creating financial stability and accountability. One specific means in this endeavor is represented by cost accounting, which represents a key to organizational success. The current project focuses on the identification of the reasons as to why cost accounting is important to organizational success. A secondary research objective is that of pin pointing…

References:

Pizzey, A., 1989, Cost and management accounting: an introduction for students, 3rd Edition, SAGE

2009, Cost accounting definition, Accounting for Management,  http://www.accountingformanagement.com/cost_accounting_definition.htm  last accessed on January 26, 2011

2010, Activity based accounting, Accounting Coach,  http://www.accountingcoach.com/online-accounting-course/35Xpg01.html  last accessed on January 26, 2011

2010, Cost accounting, Investopedia,  http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cost-accounting.asp  last accessed on January 26, 2011

Sound usiness ased on Sound Finances

Podosave Ltd. is a food retail organization for which I will present a financial analysis based on the information I gained and the knowledge I acquired as a result of my role within the business.

My Role

My role was to work within the business, recruiting for vacant positions and training existing employees in order that they were able to attain relevant skills for their roles. Reporting to Head Office, I would relay information that was relevant to the HR department and act on the department's behalf.

The role of financial management in business

Financial management is fundamental to the success of a business and the strength of its financial 'health'. Those who work in managing a firm's finances should be able to identify its strengths and weaknesses whilst locating opportunities for growth. A key component of this is to compare financial statements against…

Bibliography

1. Brealey, Myers Principles of Corporate Finance, 5th ed. The McGraw Companies Inc. 1996

2. Van Horn, J Financial Management and Policy, 11th ed., Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 1998

3. Limitation of Ratio Analysis http://cbdd.wsu.edu/kewlcontent/cdoutput/TOM505/page26.htm

4. Activity-Based Costing and the Development of Cost Pools http://www.qry.com/lmu/book/mach5.pdf

Business 315 and Analyzing Direct Costs

Analyzing Costs

It is crucial for an organization to properly calculate semi-variable costs in order to allocate indirect and direct costs. These costs govern over direct materials, which are "materials that physically become part of a product or service and therefore are clearly indentified with specific outputs or service" (Thompson 2011). Semi-variable costs change often, depending on the volume of the output. These mixed costs are associated with both fixed and variable elements to production. These costs are often broken up using the cost-volume formula which takes into account activity measures like labor as well as the fixed costs and variable unit rate. This helps an organization then outline indirect costs, which are those costs that are unable to be specifically outlined or traced according to a corresponding cost object (Thompson 2011). Essentially, indirect costs are associated with activities of an organization or enterprise…

References

Ruth, James. (2012). Overview of cost definitions and costing methods. World Bank Group. Web.  http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTPRS1/Resources/383606-1201883571938/Cost_Definitions_and_Methods.pdf 

Thompson, Fred. (2011). Cost measurement and analysis. Willamette University. Web.  http://www.willamette.edu/~fthompso/pubfin/Cost_Analysis.html

Inventory Management

The author of this report is to speak on two major topics in this brief paper. The first topic is inventory management in the context of getting the right amount of a product where it needs to be and when it needs to be there. Further, there will be discussion of the ABC system as it relates to a firm that the author of this report is familiar with. There will also be a discussion of lean synchronization and its overall goal of perfect quality with no waste at all. There are two forms of waste in particular that will be discussed and those are waste from irregular flow and waste from inflexible response. While perfect quality with no waste is not really feasible, it should always be the goal for a firm that is serious about quality and proper inventory management.

Analysis

When it comes to inventory…

References

Ford, (2015). Ford - New Cars, Trucks, SUVs, Hybrids & Crossovers | Ford Vehicles.

[online] Ford.com. Available at:  http://ford.com  [Accessed 29 Aug. 2015].

Meerkov, S, & Liang, Z 2011, 'Unbalanced production systems with floats: analysis and lean design', International Journal Of Manufacturing Technology & Management,

23, 1/2, pp. 4-15, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 28 August

Accounting

This accounting report is intended to emphasize the importance of the role of a management accountant in business operational and financial decisions. The focus on two companies engaging in different lines of business with disparate concerns, questions, and issues provides a basis for the reader to understand specific instances in which a management accountant can play a pivotal role in the success of an enterprise. W. White Chemicals was perplexed about their loss of market share and a small drop in revenue. When the executives came together to discuss the problems, they each had a different opinion about the source of the problem and the possible solutions. The management accountant was able to demonstrate how a change from the traditional accounting system the company was using to an activity-based system would help the team interpret the market situation and get a handle on the actual, rather than the obfuscated,…

Bibliography

Fontinelle, A. (2014). What management accountants do. Investopedia. Retrieved from  http://www.investopedia.com/articles/professionals/041713/what-management-accountants-do.asp 

Appendices

6

PART A

Deere Cost Management
1. What happens to procurement and its relationship with the supply based when the need for budgeted cost management interferes with communication, relationships, and other outside market pressures?
The procurement and its relationship with the supply based when the need for budgeted cost management interferes with communication, relationships, and other outside market pressures. This state of affairs develops a competitive advantage owing to the strategic discerning to make procurement and supply base. The communication evades being financial damage as a result of the precise procedures between procurement and supply base. The relationships generate trust and other market pressures generate culpability between procurement and supply base efficiently and efficaciously. This state of affairs strengthens the company’s market share in the business setting with massive success (Fredendall and Hill, 2016).
2. How does market competition influence your ability to sell for a price that allows you to cover costs…

Environmental Accounting

What kinds of information does a firm need to evaluate and choose among pollution abatement options?

Environmental accounting is a field of environmental science that deals with the identification of resources and their appropriate use as well as deliberating on reducing pollution. The use of this field of knowledge has enabled environmental managers to ensure that there is a safe environment for all people. This field has been part of the larger field of accounting practice for a long time. Its specialization in environmental issues is what makes it be studied under environmental science.

Pollution abatement is a field of environmental accounting that deals with ways that are used to mitigate the effects of pollution by barring the major causes as well as minimizing the effects. Several methods that are used include barring the causes, minimizing the effects of an already existing harm and the use of sanctions…

5.

How did AT&T implement Environmental Accounting?

The concept of environmental accounting has particularly been useful assessing damage caused by industrial pollution. The concept of green accounting at AT&T dates back to 1995 when the company initiated the concept. Terms like 'societal costs' and 'private costs' emerged from the company's efforts to foster the success of the initiative. The managerial commitment to this cause was first seen with the establishment of the Design for the Environment program. This policy sought to foster the company's efforts in protecting the environment as headed by a Green Accounting Team. The company managed to reduce its costs and limit activities on environmental pollution by declaring its costs on the cause, supporting and complying with the laid down environmental policies, and providing proof of the same. All the activities were aligned with the TQM, DfE, and Activity-Based Costing.

Activities to Reduce Inappopiate Behavios Displayed by Childen With Autism and Othe Developmental Disabilities

The pupose of this dissetation study is to test the effectiveness of an eveyday activities-based potocol (Holm, Santangelo, Fomuth, Bown & Walte, 2000) fo managing challenging and disuptive behavios of 13- to 23-yea-old esidential students (male and female) with Autism who live at Melmak Homes, Inc., of southeasten Pennsylvania, and attend school o adult day pogams. Applied behavio analysis and a focus on eveyday occupations (activities) will be combined duing the intevention phase. Reinfocement will be fo subtask completion and duation of paticipation, NOT fo absence of taget maladaptive o disuptive behavios. Behavio analysts, howeve, will document the fequency/duation of the taget behavios duing each condition. Inteventions will occu daily, Monday though Fiday. A single-subject, multiple-baseline, acoss-subjects design with nine subjects will be used to evaluate change in behavios unde altenating conditions. Data will be analyzed…

references, and favorites)

Child and Family Assets

(Abilities, strengths, skills, accomplishments, and capabilities)

Functional and Meaningful Interactions

(Purposeful interactions; ways interests and assets are used in everyday life)

CVP is very useful for small business also because the analysis takes
into consideration variables like eturn on Investment, or Customer
Acquisition Cost. This analysis allows the company to determine what the
maximum profit volume can be, and how the above mentioned variables can be
changed in order to become successful.
CVP analysis is also able to determine the results of media campaigns,
especially for small business, where results are more visible and can be
observed after a shorter period of time. Furthermore, these results can be
translated into a successful company strategy, given the fact that the
strategy would be based on verified results. In relation to this, market
share can increase due to such a strategy.
For small business, CVP analysis is also used in establishing the
company's budget for certain activities. The analysis is able to provide a
flexible budget variant, which is exactly what a small…

Reference list:
1. Cost Volume Profit Analysis (2008). Business Owner's Toolkit.
Retrieved May 14, 2008 from
 http://www.toolkit.com/smallbusinessguide/sbg.aspx?nid=P0675 
00.
2. CVP Analysis (2008). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Retrieved May 14, 2008 from
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CVPanalysis .
3. Kee, Robert (2007). Cost volume profit analysis incorporating

Controlling Construction Cost:

It is seldom that the initial bid estimate to carry out a specific construction activity is the same as the actual cost of doing the work. Generally, the estimate cost tends to be higher or lower due to the various unforeseeable factors that contribute to the differences. Therefore, it is increasingly essential for the project manager and contractor to keep current on the costs of a project through maintaining an accurate and reliable cost control system, especially if a contractor is to make a profit. However, the project manager has an overriding role of providing the project management team with necessary strong and proactive leadership during the construction period. This overriding role and task includes ensuring that the most effective approach to control construction has been adopted and tracking construction activities and costs.

Since the construction phase of a project is usually affected by various external factors…

References:

Chartered Institute of Building 2010, Code of practice for project management for construction and development, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford.

Olawale, Y.A & Sun, M 2010, 'Cost and time control of construction projects: inhibiting factors and mitigating measures in practice,' Construction Management and Economics, vol. 28, no. 5, pp.509-26.

Accounting

Differential Cost

Differential Cost strategy when used by an educational entity such as UOS means that the institution determines what it would cost to offer alternative forms of education based on the number of students interested in choosing those alternative forms. In other words, by offering choices to the students based on the student's specific needs and desires and then measuring the difference in cost when compared to other educational offerings, the school will know exactly what the differential cost is. This allows the school to offer courses and activities in the most efficient and effective manner, and in a manner that produces the highest amount of revenue with the lowest cost. By knowing the difference between the school's offerings and what the same type of offerings are being offered by their competitors, the school will be capable of offering more for less. As an example, if the school…

Tourist Behavior Toward Nature-Based Tourism Activities

For most of the developing countries tourism industry is playing a very important role in boosting their economies. In 2004, it was found out that Asia Pacific was one of the fastest growing tourism regions (Cruey, 2005). According to WTO, up to 3% of world's tourism market is made up of Thailand, Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka. It was in 1970's that the development of Thai international tourism started (Mcdowall and Wang, 2007). Tourism industry accounts for 5.1% of Thailand's National Gross Domestic Product (Tourism Authority of Thailand, 2009). For the purpose of providing a proper development direction, the National Economics and Social Development Plan (NESDP) served as a guide (Mcdowall and Wang, 2007). The result of the survey which was conducted by the Universities of USA and Thailand, showed that Thailand stood on the first place as best hospital city for all the…

References

Blamey, R.K. (2001). Principles of ecotourism. In Encyclopedia of Ecotourism, Weaver D (ed). CAB International: Wallingford, England; 5 -- 22.

Brass, J.L. (1997). Community Tourism Assessment Handbook. Western Rural Development Centre, Utah State University, ed.

Business Day, (2005). Tourist Sector Wins 3.65BN Baht Budget. [Electronic bulletin board], February 24, 2005.

Carter, R. And Fabricius, M. (2007). UNWTO Conference in Topic is Creating campetitve advantage for your destination, Budapest, UNWTO Consultants (TEAM tourism Consulting).

RSMean is used for construction estimating. Many construction projects can be difficult to estimate and the RSMeans database is a useful tool in preparing a bid for a client. The database can be used to calculate a construction project based on square footage, the equipment used and the materials used. The building cost index that is used in the system has been compiled over time and includes cost information about industry averages for specific construction activities. This index can account for the increased costs of a construction project that are due to factors such as inflation, cost of materials, and the cost of labor. For example, cost information from a construction project in the 1980s can be adjusted to represent what a similar project would cost in today's market. The accuracy of such estimates is considered to be within twenty to thirty percent of the actual costs. Therefore there is…

activities, the services we will be proposing will deal with a certain set of activities that a working individual has less and less time for and will be tempted to turn to a specialized company that will help him deal with such kind of activities. Paying bills, shopping for groceries and other needed products in the house, requiring information to the banks for credits or payment options, going with the car to the car service -- these are the sort of activities that the modern individual has less and less time for and is more and more inclined to simply outsource.

As such, our company will deal with providing all these types of services for our customers, services that are likely to create more leisure time for the working individual and remove the unnecessary hours spent dealing with the home administrative problems.

This introduction already gives a little insight in…

Activity Studies found common features high-performing health departments manage diabetes. These departments include receiving external funding programming, a -management education program recognized American Diabetes Association, partnership opportunities.

While obesity and obesity-related complaints such as Type II diabetes are a problem all over the United States, in my home state of Georgia, the condition has been of particular, growing concern. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), "64.8% of adults were overweight, with a Body Mass Index of 25 or greater" and "29.6% of adults were obese, with a Body Mass Index of 30 or greater" in the state (Georgia's response to obesity, 2012, CDC). Even more worrisome, amongst adolescents who should be at the most active stage of their lives, "14.8% were overweight (>85th and < 95th percentiles for BMI by age and sex) 12.4% were obese (>95th percentile for BMI by age and sex)" (Georgia's response to obesity,…

References

Rivard, P. (2003). Accountability for patient safety: A review of cases, concepts, and practices.

Massachusetts Coalition for the Prevention of Medical Errors. Retrieved:  http://www.macoalition.org/Initiatives/docs/Accountability%20LitReview%20Final_Rivard_new%20copyright.pdf

activities which are more popular or enjoyable than sitting down to watch a movie with a steaming bag of freshly popped microwave popcorn. The smell and taste of microwave popcorn both invoke strong sensory cues often associated with the pleasant experience of cinema viewer-ship. It is not often that we stop to consider the content of these convenient single-serve bags, either nutritionally or chemically. However, new evidence is emerging all the time to suggest that there are significant and alarming health imperatives to begin examining our popcorn more closely. As the discussion here will show, popcorn as a snack-food is fairly innocuous and, in fact, if served properly, can be an excellent low-calorie source of carbohydrates. However, when combined with the synthetic substances, the additives and the packaging compounds used in a bag of microwave popcorn, popcorn can present its consumer with severe health risks.

This is particularly troubling because…

Works Cited:

Adams, M. (2011). Did you know? Microwave popcorn gives off a toxic, lung-damaging gas when cooked. Natural News.

Hendrickson, K. (2011). The Cancer Risk of Microwave Popcorn. Livestrong.com.

Noble, K. & Noble, L. (2011). When Popcorn Attacks! Microwave Popcorn, Infertility and Cancer. This Green Earth.

Richards, P. (2008). New Research Suggests Microwave Popcorn Contains High Levels of Cancer-causing Chemicals. Yahoo! News.

Health Care Cost and Quality

The objective of this study is to examine the relationship between health care cost and quality. This study will select one public agency and one private agency and differentiate their roles and major activities in addressing cost and quality in health care and analyze current and projected initiatives to improve quality while simultaneously controlling costs. This study will additionally conduct a synthesis of indications for staff nurses and advanced practice nurses, including evidence-based practice, relative to cost and quality.

There are many initiatives presently underway to meet the growing need of health care for a population that is greatly under-insured and many that are uninsured.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services eport

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2014) "Medicare is improving the way it pays for physician services. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (Innovation Center) is exploring…

References

Advanced Practice Nursing: A New Age in Health Care (nd) American Nurses Association. Retrieved from:  http://www.nursingworld.org/functionalmenucategories/mediaresources/mediabackgrounders/aprn-a-new-age-in-health-care.pdf 

Health Care Costs (2014) Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Retrieved from:  http://www.ahrq.gov/research/findings/factsheets/costs/health-care/index.html 

A 21st Century Health Care Workforce for the Nation (2014) U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Retrieved from:  http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/reports/2014/HealthCare_Workforce/rpt_healthcareworkforce.pdf

Introduction
The delivery health care system takes into account the assimilation of physicians, healthcare facilities, together with other medical services with plan to facilitate the provision of the total continuum of medical care for its consumers. In a whole incorporated system, the three fundamental components including physicians, medical facilities and the membership to health plans are counterpoised in terms of equating medical resources with the necessities of patients and purchasers (Coddington, Moore, and Fischer., 1994). One of the key concerns in the present delivery of healthcare is cost. Increasing costs of healthcare has been a major worry in the past number of years, making the United States to have one of the most expensive systems of healthcare. The main objective of this paper is to analyze the different costs linked to healthcare delivery system, and delineate the manner in which these costs impact different populations and how it also affects…

Quality Analysis

Healthcare Quality and Cost

Despite the fact that there is a comprehensive policy agreement that both cost control and quality enhancement are vital, the relationship between health care costs and quality is one of contention in debates in health care policy. One conceivable aspect is that enhancement in quality necessitates infusion of investments or on the contrary, reductions on cost could diminish quality. On the other hand, improvements in quality could decrease costs by diminishing intricacies or healthcare facility readmissions. As a matter of fact, the relationship between cost and quality possibly lies between these two ends, so that some kinds on health care costs are linked with high quality and others with poor quality. The impact is reliant on the areas the funds are expensed (Hussey et al., 2013).

Select one public agency and one private agency and differentiate their roles and major activities in addressing cost…

References

Centers for Health Care Strategies. (2016). About Us: What We Do. Retrieved from:  http://www.chcs.org/about-us/what-we-do/ 

CMS. (2013). CMS Strategy: The Road Forward 2013 -- 2017. Retrieved from: https://www.cms.gov/About-CMS/Agency-Information/CMS-Strategy/Downloads/CMS-Strategy.pdf

Hussey, P. S., Wertheimer, S., & Mehrotra, A. (2013). The association between health care quality and cost: a systematic review. Annals of internal medicine, 158(1), 27-34.

Malnyk, M. (2016). Improving healthcare quality, patient outcomes, and costs with evidence-based practice. Reflections on Nursing Practice.

EEOC eview

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is far and away the most prolific and omni-present agency that exists in the United States, at least at the federal level, that regulates employers and protects employees from discrimination and other unlawful and/or unethical employment practices including inequity in who is hired, who is fired, who is promoted and why, who is given raises and why and so forth. While budgetary constraints and some of the EEOC's recent decisions certainly deserve attention and scrutiny, the EEOC's status as the ultimate arbiter of employee rights in the United States is not going to change anytime soon.

The mission statement of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is to "stop and remedy unlawful employment discrimination" (EEOC, 2014). The vision statement of the EEOC is "justice and equality in the workplace." The EEOC states quite clearly on their website that they know full well,…

References

DrugFree.org. (2014, May 18). Discrimination Against People in Recovery Rampant, Advocates Say |. Partnership for DrugFree Kids. Retrieved May 18, 2014, from  http://www.drugfree.org/join-together/discrimination-against-people-in-recovery-rampant-advocates-say/ 

EEOC. (2014, May 17). EEOC Home Page. EEOC Home Page. Retrieved May 17, 2014, from  http://www.eeoc.gov 

EEOC. (2014, May 18). Fiscal Year 2014 Congressional Budget Justification. Fiscal Year 2014 Congressional Budget Justification. Retrieved May 18, 2014, from

Nu Star Energy L.P. is a limited partnership that is publicly traded and headquartered in San Antonio. It has 9,063 miles of pipeline, eighty-six terminal facilities, four storage facilities for crude oil and two refineries for asphalt. It is the second in size among independent liquid terminal operators in the United States. It operates in the U.S., Netherlands, Canada, United Kingdom, Antilles and Mexico. The entire system of the partnership can hold up to 86 million barrels in its storage infrastructure. It has refineries for asphalt, crude oil and has pipelines for refined products. Also present are terminals for refined products, a storage facility for petroleum, a terminal operation as well as storage facilities for crude oil. NuStar strives to protect the environment and continually works to improve its programs and processes so as to meet even the most stringent of environmental practices. This has resulted in better environmental performance.…

References

Becker, R., & Henderson, V. (2000). Effects of air quality regulations on polluting industries. Journal of Political Economy, 108(2), 379-421.

Bradbury, J. (2010). EPA, The Clean Air Act, and U.S. Manufacturing. Retrieved January 30, 2015, from  http://www.wri.org/blog/2010/11/epa-clean-air-act-and-us-manufacturing 

Deschenes, O., Greenstone, M., & Shapiro, J.S. (2012). Defensive investments and the demand for air quality: Evidence from the nox budget program and ozone reductions (No. w18267). National Bureau of Economic Research.

Environmental Decision Making, Science, and Technology. (n.d.). Retrieved January 30, 2015, from  http://environ.andrew.cmu.edu/m3/s7/us_laws.shtml

Accounting

a) i) Using direct labour hours as the cost driver for the overhead costs, the following table presents the net profit calculation for each line of motorcycle:

Vroom plc

Total Profit

Driver:

Direct labour

Sunshine

oadster

Fireball

Output

DL

P

Materials

evenue

less DL

less Materials

Gross Profit

Less Overhead

Net Profit

Activity-based costing is designed to allocate overhead costs based on the resources that each activity consumes (The Economist, 2009). The key to activity-based costing is that the cost drivers are assigned differently, and in a manner that should better reflect actual resource usage than a cost driver that may be picked almost at random (Investopedia, 2013). Using ABC, the following are the net profit calculations for the three different products at Vroom.

Vroom plc

Total Profit

Driver:

ABC

Sunshine

oadster

Fireball

Output

DL

100000

110000

40000

250000

P

Materials

Deliveries

Set-ups

Purchase orders

evenue

7

8

2800000…

References

The Economist. (2009). Activity-based costing. The Economist. Retrieved November 12, 2013 from  http://www.economist.com/node/13933812 

Investopedia. (2013). Activity-based costing. Investopedia. Retrieved November 12, 2013 from  http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/abc.asp

Managerial Accounting:

Manufacturing Overhead:

The costs allocated to a cost object can be considered as fixed or variable as well as direct or indirect costs. There are two types of costing systems that are used by management accountants i.e. job-costing systems and process-costing systems. While job-costing systems mount up and track costs differently for every product or service, the process-costing systems are basically used by companies manufacturing huge quantities of similar or identical products. Notably, companies usually classify manufacturing costs into three various categories i.e. manufacturing overhead, direct materials, and direct labor ("Systems Design: Job-Order Costing," n.d.). Even though direct materials and direct labor costs are traced to jobs, manufacturing overhead costs are not traced to jobs in similar ways. However, manufacturing overhead costs are included with direct materials and direct labor on the job cost sheet since it is also a product cost. Assigning these costs to overhead units…

References:

"Absorption Costing or Full Costing System." (n.d.). Cost Analysis. Retrieved from Suffolk

County Community College website: http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/rosesr/ACC212/Lessons/CostAnalysis/Absorption_vs_Variable_Costing.pdf

"ACTG Chapter 8." (n.d.). Quizlet LLC. Retrieved July 7, 2014, from  http://quizlet.com/8151163/actg-chapter-8-flash-cards/ 

Cokins, G. (2006). Implementing Activity-based Costing. Retrieved July 7, 2014, from  http://www.imanet.org/PDFs/Public/Research/SMA/Implementing%20Activity%20Based%20Costing.pdf

Financial Analysis of Bestwish Limited

Company Overview

Bestwish Limited produces extensive range of quality products such as gift dressing, greetings cards, and plush merchandise of more than 50,000 stocks. The production of different categories of products involve between 2 and 15 processes. The company produces standardized products and custom designed products ordered from customers on contract basis. However, Bestwish Limited is facing challenges to control the costs because of varying production process, reliance on indirect costs and large number of stock keeping units.

Bestwish Limited has just closed the 2010 fiscal year account and the company is finalizing the 2011 budget. Bestwish intends to analyze the 2010 financial statement to present the accurate picture of the company financial performances.

Objective of this report is to analyze 2010 financial statements to assess the viability of Bestwish Limited.

Task

Attn:

Audit Committee of the Board

Finance Director

Subject: Financial statement Analysis

Date:…

References

Drury, C. (2009). Management Accounting for Business, 4th Edition (Cengage Learning EMEA, ) ISBN 1408017717.

Harris, R. And Sollis, R. (2003).Applied Time Series Modelling and Forecasting (John Wiley and Sons) ISBN 0470844434

Glynn, J. Perrin, J. Murphy, M. And Abraham, A. (2003).Accounting for Managers, 3rd Edition.(Thomson Learning) ISBN 186152904X

The Times 100, (2012). Financial statements and reporting A Cadbury Schweppes case study. The Times 100 Business Case Studies.

Super Bakery

What strategies did the management of Super Bakery, Inc. use?

ealizing that they were in a highly competitive, and at times commoditized business, Super Bakery Inc., relied on a series of strategies to differentiate themselves from their competitors while also concentrating on key accounts. The bakery wisely concentrated on high-value segments and strategies that could drive greater profitability on an account basis. These strategies included concentrating on the school system segment of the institutional food market for schools, whom the company believed was poorly served with existing bakery products. Super Bakery also pioneered low calorie, vitamin enriched donuts that met USDA guidelines and strived to taste good too. This strategy proved prescient for the bakery as high-fat donuts began to decline due to the public's concern over healthy snacks and eating (Davis, Darling, 1996). The second strategy the Super Bakery relied on was avoiding the local market restriction…

References

Davis, T.R.V., & Darling, B.L. (1996). ABC in a virtual corporation. Management Accounting, 78(4), 18-18.

Latshaw, C.A., & Cortese-Danile, T. (2002). Activity-based costing: Usage and pitfalls. Review of Business, 23(1), 30-32.