Читать книгу Cost Accounting For Dummies - Kenneth W. Boyd - Страница 19

The cost of obtaining information should be lower than the benefit you receive from your analysis. The cost includes labor hours and technology costs. For example, you need someone to search for the information. You also may need to create new cost reports in using your technology. The benefit of performing the analysis is the cost savings you’re able to implement.

Say you manufacture dining room tables; you make five different models of tables. At one point in production, your staff sands the wooden tabletops by hand.

Until now, you haven’t calculated the time required to sand each type of table. You take the total labor costs for sanding and trace them to each table, regardless of the model. Maybe you should do a cost analysis and assign the sanding cost to each table model.

You incur some costs to do the analysis. Someone on your staff will go through the employee time cards (used for payroll). The workers record the time they spend on all tasks, including sanding. They also record the table models they worked on during production. Your accountant can compute the total sanding time per table model, based on the time cards.

Consider what you might gain. You assign the sanding cost more precisely. As a result, each table model’s total cost is more accurate. Because your profit is the sale price less the total costs, the updated cost allows you to calculate a more precise profit. Sounds like the cost of the analysis might be worth it, especially if the competition is high in your furniture-making industry.