Activity-Based Costing

ACTIVITY-BASED COSTING AND SMALL BUSINESSES

It used to be that large corporations were the only businesses involved in activity-based costing. Not so today. Service industries such as banks, hospitals, insurance companies, and real estate agencies have all had success with ABC. But since its inception, activity-based costing has seemed to have been more successful when implemented by larger companies rather than by smaller ones. As Henrick noted, "Companies with only a few products and markets aren't likely to get as much benefit from basing costs on activities as companies operating with diverse products, service lines, channels and customers." But since setting up activity-based costing for a business usually takes less time for a smaller project, a small business that is unsure about the effectiveness of ABC can consider a simple test program to determine whether it is right for them.

Douglas T. Hicks is one expert who feels that the time is right for small businesses to implement activity-based costing. In a 1999 Journal of Accountancy article entitled "Yes, ABC is for Small Business, Too," Hicks presented a case study for one of his clients, a small manufacturer that builds components for the automobile industry. Hicks detailed how they were able to triple sales and increase profits fivefold in a four-year span after adopting ABC. "Much of this improvement came from a profitable mix of contracts generated by a costing/quoting process that more closely reflects the actual cost structure of the company," Hicks stated. "This has enabled the company to improve the management of its contracts." Isolating and measuring the cost of material movement and using the data to justify many operational changes were other factors Hicks cited for the success his client had with ABC.

Hicks also noted a change in management's attitude after the success of ABC: "On an important but less tangible level, management's knowledge of and attitude toward cost information have undergone a substantial change. Where once managers had their own way of measuring the cost impact of management actions, they now measure those costs in a formal, uniform way. When managers contemplate changes, they have a mental model that directs them toward changes that truly benefit the organization."

POTENTIAL PITFALLS OF ACTIVITY-BASED COSTING

Companies that implement activity-based costing programs run the risk of spending far too much time, effort, and even money on gathering and going over the collected data. Too many details can prove frustrating. On the other hand, too light a touch means lack of actionable information. Another obvious factor that tends to contribute to the downfall of activity-based costing is the simple failure to act on the results that the data provide.

In early 2005 the proponent of activity-based costing, Professor Robert S. Kaplan, published an article in the Harvard Business School Working Knowledge entitled "Rethinking Activity-Based Costing." The article acknowledges problems with implementing ABC programs. It appears ABC has proven to be too much work for many and too complicated for many companies to use and maintain over time. The author insists that "the solution to problems with ABC is not to abandon the concept." He goes on to outline a new ABC program which he and his co-author, Steven R. Anderson, call time-driven ABC. Although not fully developed in this article, the new time-driven ABC method is described as a simplification of the original ABC method.

Time-driven ABC requires, for each group of resources, estimates of only two parameters. First, the entire overhead expenditure of a single department divided by the total number of minutes of employee time available. Second, an estimate of how much time it takes to carry out one unit of each kind of activity, for example, the time it takes to process one order. This simplifies greatly the work required t set up an ABC system and may make its implementation more feasible for smaller companies.

As the ways in which we make things change, so too will the systems and methods used to track costs and properly associate them with the products and services being produced. In order to efficiently produce goods and services it is important to know the price of the inputs to the system, both direct and indirect. The more accurately we are able to track these costs, the more efficiently we will be able to make our processes.

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