Activity-Based Costing in Service Industries
Describe the company you researched in one to two (1-2) paragraphs.
Since many traditional industries that deal with goods for sale also offer some service, it was somewhat difficult to settle on a company that dealt in services exclusively. Home Depot or another of that sort would have been easy because they offer both, but the company used for this examination was State Farm. Insurance companies will sometimes offer real products to their customers, but the main product is insurance and State Farm is recognized as the largest seller of insurance of individual automobile insurance in the United States.
The company began selling insurance in 1922 and worked primarily with homeowners in the cities and in the country. The company did work with automobile owners, but because no laws had been passed at the time to require automobile owners to have any form of insurance, it was not a large part of the business. The company was started by G.J. Mecherle who was a retired rancher who wanted to help his neighbors retain their wealth (State Farm, 2012). Almost immediately though, the focus of the business turned to automobiles. The reason for this was that people did not have any means to make insure that particular investment. Mecherle worked with two other people to set up that first office. Now, the company has more than 17,000 agents assigned to a large number of local offices. The company has been so successful offering its services since that time that they have opened the State Farm Bank which serves the needs of its customers, as well as a roadside assistance business and a comprehensive website.
2. Discuss how a time driven ABC cost system can be implemented in the company you researched and the benefits that the use will yield to the business performance.
first of all, it makes sense that activity-based costing would be used in a service industry because it provides a clearer picture of the product that is being sold. Each activity that is being performed by...
ABC can identify high overhead costs per unit and find ways to reduce the costs, avoid decreases in head counts due to inaccurate allocation of costs, and measure profitability with higher accuracy than traditional costing that uses direct-labor hours as the only cost driver (Activity-based costing, n.d.). Bibliography Activity-based costing (ABC). (n.d.). Retrieved Apr 2, 2009, from Managers-Net: http://www.managers-net.com/activityBC.html Activity-based costing (ABC): What is it and how can reengineering teams use it?
(Questions that will assist in quantifying the relationship between resources and activities include: How much time is spent performing each activity? What equipment is used to perform activities? Do some activities have dedicated equipment? Do some activities require more space than others?) After the data on resources have been collected, establish cause-and-effect relationships between resources and activities or resources and cost objects. The third step in the process is
Activity-Based Costing Organizations that need help being more efficient and cost effective look to different concepts for help, one such concept is activity-based costing. Activity-based costing is used to manage an organization better and is meant to help with decision making by coming up with better information about the cost and performance of activities, resources and objects that consume resources ("Activity-based management -- an overview," 2001). This essay will discuss ABC
This paper is a discussion on Activity-based costing (ABC), one of the costing methodologies used in business. The methodology essentially entails assigning a cost to the various activities of an organization, which range from planning and production to quality control, logistics, and distribution (Kaplan & Anderson, 2007). It also entails determining the amount of time required to perform the activities (Kaplan & Anderson, 2004). The cost and time are then
Activity-Based Costing in a Service-Based Organization Activity-Based Costing operates on the conventional approach and applies a two-stage allocation instruction and other cost drivers. First, the system identifies the important activities and overhead costs assigned to each activity in proportion to the resources used. Consequently, for each of these cost pools, cost drivers are identified. Secondly, the assumed overhead cost driver is assigned proportionally to the final outputs of the cost
Many organizations have sufficient control over their cost drivers, specifically those that work with activity-based costing; these companies can locate a sufficient amount of cost information within the company to accomplish these analyses in a timely fashion (Chatzkel, 2003). In reality, though, ABC systems are typically structurally complex and, in spite of the need for complete integration of such ABC systems, many such systems remain as stand-alone analysis tools
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