What is the core content of activity-based costing?

Activity-based cost is the total cost and unit cost calculated according to the operation items of planting crops (such as plowing, sowing, harvesting, threshing, irrigation and drainage, etc.). ) in agricultural accounting cost accounting. Content refers to the cost calculation method based on workload and taking activity as the basic object of cost calculation, aiming at providing more relevant and relatively accurate cost information for enterprise activity management.

Accounting element system

Understanding and mastering the accounting elements of ABCM is the basis of mastering the knowledge of cost management of production activities. In order to implement activity-based costing management and construct activity-based costing accounting model, it is necessary to calculate activity-based costing. Activity-based cost management involves four accounting elements: resources, activities, cost objects and cost drivers. Among them, resources, activities and cost objects are the undertakers and distributable objects of costs. In enterprises, resources, activities and cost objects often have complex relationships. Cost driver is the factor that leads to the change of production cost. As long as it can cause cost changes, it is the cost driver. See figure 1.

(1) Resources

As a concept, resources are very extensive, covering all the value carriers of an enterprise, including materials, energy, equipment, capital and labor. However, resources in activity-based cost management essentially refer to the cost of production activities or products, in other words, resources refer to the total cost. As the object of distribution, resources are consumed expenses, or can be understood as each expense. If resources are directly allocated to activities and cost objects, it is the direct material of traditional cost method.

(2) Homework

Activity refers to the work that consumes resources for a certain purpose in an organization. Activity is the core element of activity-based cost management. According to the level and scope of enterprise business, jobs can be divided into the following four categories: unit jobs, batch jobs, product jobs and support jobs:

(1) unit activities: activities that benefit unit products or services, and the consumption of resources is often proportional to the output or sales volume of products. Common operations such as machining parts and inspecting each product.

(2) Batch operation: an operation that benefits a batch of products. The operating cost is directly proportional to the batch number of the product. Common things such as equipment debugging and production preparation;

(3) Product operation: an operation that benefits every unit of the product. For example, NC code compilation of parts, product process design, etc.

(4) Support operation: the operation that benefits all products in order to maintain the normal production of the enterprise, and the operating cost has nothing to do with the number of products. Such as plant maintenance and management. Generally speaking, all work except the first three categories is considered as auxiliary work.

(3) Cost object

Cost object is the object that enterprises need to measure costs. According to the needs of enterprises, each production batch can be used as the cost object, and a variety can also be used as the cost object. In new management tools such as customer portfolio management, it is necessary to calculate the profit of each customer to determine the target customer group, in which each customer is a cost object.

Cost objects can be divided into market cost objects and production cost objects. The determination of market cost object is mainly based on different market channels and different customers. It mainly measures the actual benefits brought by different channels and customers, and the accounting results are mainly used for market decision-making and supporting enterprise product decision-making. Production cost object is the cost object within the enterprise, including various products and semi-finished products, which is used to measure the production results within the enterprise.

(d) cost drivers

Cost driver refers to the measurement index that explains the characteristics of the activity in which the cost occurs and reflects the cost consumed by the activity or the workload consumed by other activities. Cost drivers can be divided into three categories: transaction cost drivers, continuous cost drivers and accurate cost drivers.

(1) Transaction cost driver, which measures the frequency of operation, such as equipment adjustment times, order quantity, etc. When the requirements of all outputs are basically the same, we can choose the transaction cost driver. Take home appliance manufacturers as an example, the time and energy required to arrange the production of a certain type of refrigerator or process an order of the same type has nothing to do with the number of products produced or the number of orders.

(2) continuous cost drivers, reflecting the time required to complete an operation. If the resources consumed by different quantities of products are significantly different, a more accurate measurement standard should be adopted. For example, products with simple process flow need shorter equipment adjustment time at a time, while products with complex process flow need longer equipment adjustment time. If the equipment adjustment is used as the cost driver, it may lead to the wrong activity-based costing. At this time, it is more appropriate to use the time required for equipment adjustment as the cost driver.

(3) Accurate cost drivers, that is, directly calculating the resource cost consumed by each operation. When there are significant differences in manpower, technology and resources consumed by equipment adjustment in unit time, it may be necessary to use accurate cost drivers to directly calculate the resource cost consumed by the operation.

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