Write a business report on management accounting.
ABC system provides the organizations across the world with a very powerful tool which helps them in the evaluation of the costs in an efficient manner. It helps the organizations to avoid any cost distortion which occurs as a result of employing the traditional system of accounting. In this article, there have been included researches conducted by the researchers, from the time of the inception of the concept of ABC. The various researches also prove the theory that the application and implementation of the ABC system in an organization will provide precise results than the traditional systems. Further, the ABC can not only help in the cost allocation but can also help in the evaluation of profitability of an organization.
Activity Based Costing is the method of accounting of various costs related to the products. Through this method, the activities which are performed by a company are identified and then the indirect costs are allocated to the products involving those activities. This method is less arbitrary than the traditional methods and it allocates costs in a systematic manner over the products which are produced by a company. Thus, ABC can be defined as a system which helps in recognizing the connection between the various costs, products and the activities associated with manufacturing these products. This connection which is established helps in assigning the costs to various products. This method is more suitable to allocate the manufacturing costs rather than the administrative costs. For example, it will be quite difficult to allocate the costs relating to the salary of the employees over a particular product. Using ABC in the manufacturing sector helps in proper allocation of the costs since the data so obtained is reliable. This system of costing is also used in other costing methods such as the target costing, product line profitability analysis, service pricing and product costing (Investopedia, 2016).
In this method, the focus is on reducing the overhead costs by allocating the same to the activities and that allocation depends upon the costs incurred to perform the said activity. This method is in use since the 1980’s and the same has been implemented by many business houses across the world. There are various advantages of the ABC which include overall process improvement, identification of the wastes, better allocation of the prices and the flexibility to get implemented to each and every activity which a business involves. However, there are many disadvantages of using ABC as well. These disadvantages include huge costs of implementing ABC in an organization, it is time consuming to implement the same and there can be flaws in the data so obtained because the data is procured from different departments of the organization. Even a single mistake in the data can render the entire outcome useless. Hence, implementing ABC depends upon the need and want of an organization (The Next Galaxy, 2016).
According to Turney (1996), the concept of Activity Based Costing is being used since the 1980’s. In a very short span of time, the ABC has evolved as an innovative and a valuable methodology of costing. But it took nearly 20 years for the ABC to get established in the industry. The concept of ABC came into picture due to the various deficiencies in the existing traditional system of costing. At present, the ABC is serving many of the needs of the business. It is now also used as a tool for analysis of profit and also to evaluate various types of profitability such as the customer and channel profitability. Over the period since its emergence, the ABC has adapted itself to a lot many areas which include the cost to serve activities as well. At present, the ABC can be said to be the foundation of management of performance (Turney, 1991).
As per the views of Shields (1995), past decade has seen many organizations and firms developing and implementing the system of Activity Based Costing in their costing system. However there are many evidences available which clearly depict that the organizations are facing many issues in proper implementation of the ABC into their system which has rendered the implementation quite useless. They have not been able to derive the requisite benefits from implementing the ABC. The main reason of the failure can be said to be the fact that the organizations are focusing more on the designing and architecture of ABC rather than concentrating upon the behavioral factors. In many of the organizations it is treated as an innovation to technology and not as an administrative innovation. For the long term success of the ABC, the organizations must focus upon the behavioral variables of implementing the ABC and not the technical innovations (Shields, 1995).
According to the research conducted by Gosselin (1997) in this regard, the Activity Based Costing is mostly adopted and implemented by bureaucracies. This research was conducted to find out when an organization must adopt the ABC method in the organization, the situations in which the implementation will be beneficial for the firm and the organizations and also the profits associated with the implementation. As per the results, the organizations which are having high vertical differentiation are more inclined towards adopting the Activity Based Costing. Moreover it was also found from the study that the organizations which adopt the ABC are more likely to price their products in a better way. However, despite the theoretical benefits of the ABC, many of the organizations are not implementing it (Gosselin, 1997).
As per the views of Kaplan and Anderson (2003), the ABC system which was being used by the firms and the organizations initially was very expensive and also time consuming to implement. The traditional model of Activity Based Costing was very difficult for the firms to implement because of the above stated reasons. The difficulty arose due to many reasons like adding of new activities, increasing diversity of the activities of the firm and also the increasing complexity of the business conducted by the organizations. Therefore, it was required to modify the existing method so as to improve the functionality of the system. Therefore the authors in their study have suggested time-driven system of ABC. The time-driven model can be updated quickly so as to reflect the changes that occur in the undertaken processes and can be installed immediately and can be scaled to tackle thousands of transactions (Kaplan & Anderson, 2003).
As per the views of Cooper and Kaplan (1991), in the recent times the organizations are reducing their reliance on the traditional system of cost accounting. They are achieving this by developing the ABC system and implementing it in the organization. Initially, the cost managers used to implement the ABC system because they considered it as a precise way of calculating the costs of the products. But ABC has proved to be a very useful tool for conversion of various actions taken by the management into higher profits. The ABC system helps the managers to concentrate on those activities which can directly affect the bottom line of the organization (Cooper & Kaplan, 1991).
According to Edwards (2008), in the initial times, ABC was mainly meant for manufacturing industries where the productivity and the developments in the technology although had decreased the costs of labour and material but led to the increase in overhead costs of the organization. In the traditional method of cost accounting, the allocation of the costs was done arbitrarily on the basis of the machine hours and direct labour hours. But the cost allocation done with the help of ABC costing is much precise and accurate than the traditional method of cost allocation. In the ABC system, the costs are accumulated for each activity and then these costs are assigned or allocated to various products or services. The major advantage of implementing the ABC system is that it helps the organization in correctly pricing the products so manufactured by it (Edwards, 2008).
According to Roztocki and Schultz (2003), the ABC has come into focus of various researchers and managers in the 1980’s because of the growing distortions in the costing of a product due to using the traditional methods of cost accounting. The ABC approach is way better than the Traditional costing approach because it uses a two-stage procedure for allocating the costs to the products. It also uses multiple cost drivers to allocate the costs. The ABC system had many advantages but the outcomes of various studies show that the rate of application and implementation of the ABC in the organizations has been slower than it was expected (Roztocki & Schultz, 2003).
According to Lima (2011), there were many challenges that hampered the economic development of the cost accounting system in the 1980’s. During the earlier times, the costing methods were devised in a way to allocate the direct costs because at that time the direct costs formed a large part of the costs incurred by the organization. But due to the increase in technology, there has been an increase in the indirect costs and a consequent decline in the direct costs. Hence, there was a need to implement the ABC in the organizations (Lima, 2011).
According to Pete (2011), various challenges and the changes that are faced by the organizations have triggered the need of innovations in the financial and the costing management. Therefore, the companies operating in the current environment are using the enhanced systems of costing. Therefore, on the basis of the findings in this research the authors have suggested the companies across the world to employ the ABC and the ABM to manage their costs (Cardos & Pete, 2011).
According to Fei and Isa, (2010), due to the increasing complexity in the manufacturing firms, the implementation of the ABC is of utmost importance. It can be said to be one of the best strategic tools that help the management in decision making process especially the decisions relating to the pricing of the products and also to evaluate the profitability of the company. This research lays down the importance of organizational structure and culture over the technical and organizational behavior in the success of the ABC system (Fei & Isa, 2010).
According to Wegmann & Stephen (2010), the ABC system was more of a conventional system of management accounting but later on according to the needs of the business and the growing complexity refined it to a large extent. The ABC system can now be seen as a globally accepted system which along with the allocation of the costs, can also be used by the management in the decision making and evaluation of the profitability of the organization (Wegmann & Stephen, 2010).
According to Kumar and Mahto (2013), ABC can be said to be a system which helps in the determination of the true costs of the product. ABC is comparatively a new system of cost accounting than the traditional systems but it is growing at a very fast pace. This method is becoming popular with the companies because this system is designed in such a manner which enables the organizations to get more accurate information of the costs. With the implementation of the ABC in the organization, the management of the organization can make decisions regarding the unprofitable activities and eliminate them from the system completely. This will help in increasing the profitability of the company (Kumar & Mahto, 2013).
According to Briciu & Căpuşneanu (2010), there are many tools which can be used to classify the costs on the basis of the ABC system so as to do a proper analysis of the costs. The ABC method uses various types of costs such as the variable costs, fixed costs, total costs and the indirect costs. Hence, ABC system is a very reliable system of allocation of costs and no costs can be left out from the process of allocation (Briciu & Căpuşneanu, 2010).
According to the views of Mahal & Hossain (2015), the ABC is a very effective tool to avoid any type of distortion to the costs of the products, which helps the organization to achieve sustainable development (Mahal & Hossain, 2015).
Conclusion
From the above analysis of various researches conducted by the researchers, it can be concluded that the management of the company in question must switch over to the ABC system from the traditional system of costing because the outcomes from the ABC system are more reliable and accurate than the traditional system. Further, the ABC system can also be used for the evaluation of the profits of the company in a better manner, after taking into considerations all the costs which are incurred after the production of the products.
References
Gosselin, M. (1997). The effect of strategy and organizational structure on the adoption and implementation of activity-based costing. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 22(2), 105-122.
Investopedia. (2016, May 20). Activity-Based Costing – ABC.
Kaplan, R. S., & Anderson, S. R. (2003). Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing. Social Science Electronic Publishing, Inc.
Kumar, N., & Mahto, D. (2013). Current Trends of Application of Activity Based Costing (ABC):. Global Journal of Management and Business Research Accounting and Auditing, 13(1), 1-15.
Lima, C. M. (2011). The Applicability of the Principles of ActivityBased Costing System in a Higher Education Institution. Economics and Management Research Projects: An International Journal, 1(1), 57-65.
Mahal, I., & Hossain, M. A. (2015). Activity-Based Costing (ABC) – An Effective Tool for Better Management. Research Journal of Finance and Accounting, 6(4), 66-73.
Roztocki, N., & Schultz, S. M. (2003). Adoption and Implementation of Activity-Based Costing: A Web-Based Survey. IIE Annual Conference. Proceedings. (p. 1). Institute of Industrial Engineers-Publisher.
Shields, M. D. (1995). An empirical analysis of firms’ implementation experiences with activity-based costing. Journal of Management Accounting Research, 7, 148.
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