Costing systems enable firms to determine product costs in relation to the revenue generated. Traditional absorption costing and activity-based costing (ABC) techniques are the two commonly used costing systems in the manufacturing sector. The two systems differ in the way they assign the cost of production. The purpose of this report is to critically compare and contrast the two costing techniques.
Full Costing Techniques
The full costing technique is also referred to as absorption costing. Absorption costing ensures that all costs incurred during manufacturing are recovered by the products manufactured. To achieve this, both direct and indirect labor costs and fixed and variable costs are used to ascertain the cost of a product. The system involves identification and accurate assessment of all incurred costs. This is followed by a classification of costs into cost categories. All direct costs are then assigned to the production output while indirect costs are allocated to individual service departments. Production support service costs are then reallocated to production departments. This procedure is followed by the accurate establishment of an overhead rate. Finally, all overhead costs (direct and indirect) are recovered from each product.
The absorption costing system consists of three types of cost. The first type is job order costing which entails the assignment of costs to batches or lots of products. The second type of absorption costing is the process costing which involves the systematic assignment of costs to the product. The third type is activity-based costing which involves assigning costs to the products on the basis of cost centers data.
Determination of a product cost under absorption costing technique entails consideration of both variable and fixed costs. Products are directly charged variable costs such as direct labor and materials under the full costing technique. Various products manufactured at a certain period of time are apportioned fixed costs on an arbitrary basis. This means that cost determination under full costing takes into account all costs: fixed and variable costs. The method treats both variable and fixed costs as product costs. The unit cost does not take into account the level of operation for the period considered. The interest of managers who use this technique is to ensure that each product recovers all costs incurred for its production and retains something in the form of profit. This ensures that a reasonable profit is made on the investment. The recovery of full costs influences profitability under this method. Therefore, data presentation for net profit involves the deduction of fixed overheads. The full costing technique allows a firm to conform to GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) requirements when preparing external financial reports. In the US, the Tax Reform Act of 1986 requires firms to file income tax returns using absorption costing. The main purpose of full costing techniques is cost control. The technique is, however, likely to result in faulty pricing of products. Moreover, positive net operating income might be reported even before the breakeven point is attained.
Traditional Absorption Costing and Activity Based Costing Techniques
Traditional costing emerged around 1870-1920. It entails the assignment of manufacturing overhead on the basis of broad cost drivers. Cost driver refers to any factor of production that has a direct impact on product cost. Cost drivers in the manufacturing sector may include direct material hours, direct labor hours and machine hours. Traditional costing initially allocates overhead costs to service and production departments. This is followed by reassigning service department costs to the production department. Overhead costs in traditional costing are usually pooled into cost centers. Thus, cost departments are essential for a firm.
The traditional absorption costing assumes that manufacturing overhead is driven by the volume metric. As a consequence of using broad cost drivers, cause and effect are not reflected by the traditional absorption costing. This implies that different activities performed in a specified duration of time differ in terms of their costs. The result of this variation is that cost targets may be lower especially when the activities involved are complex. On the other hand, cost targets involving simple activities are likely to be overcoated. Traditional costing is thus suitable in cases where overhead costs form a lower percentage of total costs and where the product range is narrow. This shows that one has to control the activities that incur costs first before controlling co