1、Small item, such as glue ,paint and small quantities of nails,screws and rivets,do not merit the clerical effort involved in charging directly to the job,and would be recovered as an overhea00:53.32Direct wages will vary directly with production where remuneration is based upon piecework onl00:59.72
2、This means that a specific amount is paid when a production operation is successfully finishe01:04.60If it is not finished, no payment is made01:07.74In this book it is assumed that direct labour is of this natur01:11.63Many organisations remunerate labour on the basis of a large basic wage,topped u
3、p with a productivity bonu01:18.99The basic element is paid regardLesson of the level of productio01:22.65In such cases wages will not vary directly with production,and fall into the category of an indirect cost or overhea01:31.14Overhead is a general term applied to all the costs involved in runnin
4、g a business,other than direct cost01:37.70It covers the costs of running the works organisation; product research and development; the administration of the busines01:45.17selling and distributing the product;and the cost of raising finan01:49.82Overheads are diverse, covering the whole of the busi
5、ness organisation01:54.29The management accountant has the problem of allocating these costs to the individual product lines being manufacture02:00.48Cost centr02:01.78To help in this task, the organisation is split up into cost centre02:07.03These are areas of activity to which are gathered all cos
6、ts of a like natur02:11.81A maintenance department, canteen and stores are examples cost centre02:17.06Normally centres will identify with physical areas of the organisatio02:21.45A stores cost centre is a physical area in which materials are kept,while awaiting issue to productio02:28.45A centre ma
7、y also not be identifiable with a physical are02:32.40The finance cost centre will gather together all the costs of raising finance for the business,other than from owners or shareholder02:40.37It is a function of the administration department ,and cannot be identified with a physical area of the bu
8、sines02:47.13Where a cost centre has a product which is being manufactured, it is known as a product centr02:53.51Examples are a machine shop which is machining parts for assembly into the saleable product in an assembly sho03:01.26Where a centre has a product that is saleable,thus giving rise to an
9、 income,it is also known as a profit centr03:08.34It is capable of showing a profit or loss its overall activitie03:13.15Cost allocati03:15.13The management accountants task is to allocate the many ,diverse overheads, onto the cost of each product manufacture03:23.13It is a major task requiring the
10、use of many different bases of allocatio03:28.04The allocation of direct cost to a product can be precis03:32.51In the case of overhead allocation an element of logical guesstimatin enter03:38.04There is a two-fold process, firstly to collect all overhead costs onto the product or profit centres03:4
11、4.84and secondly to load the overheads onto each product passing through the centr03:50.19Text 2.2 Costs in their proper pla03:55.08The peanut butter approach to accounting is not a technique widely familiar to the UKs financial executive04:01.74And yet, according to Professor Robert Kaplan of Harva
12、rd University ,if businesses do not become aware of the dangers of this strangely named type of accountin04:11.12they risk making the wrong decisions and losing out to the competitio04:15.29Kaplan is the co-author of a seminal work on management accountancy04:19.58Unlike most tracts on this subject,
13、Kaplans book ,Relevance Lost,is surprisingly readable and makes a compelling case that conventional accounting techniques are ill-equipped to deal with modern manufacturin04:32.85Kaplan pointed out, both in the book and in many articles before and after its 1987 publicatio04:38.91that the modern fac
14、tory environment was different from its equivalent only a decade ag04:44.81Automation had replaced labour in the move to so-called world-class manufacturing,CAD-CAM and just-in-time production04:53.33But the way of accounting for a manufacturing business had moved on in a centur04:58.87Thus managers
15、 made important decisions about pricing and product mix with reference to figures which bore no resemblance to the true economics of making a batch of widgets or a custom-built moto05:10.60Costs were apportioned to the products on the traditional basis of labour hours -an inappropriate approach give
16、n the automated environmen05:18.35and Kaplan argued, equivalent to a random spreading of costs across the portfolio of products -the peanut -butter approac05:27.37In the last chapter of his book, Kaplan and his co-author offered some solution05:32.41Managers should pay more attention to non-financia
17、l criteria when making their decisions, they argue05:37.95And they should scrutinise the precise make-up of the costs involved in opting to manufacture one product rather than another,abandoning the traditional accoutants distinctions between fixed costs and variable costs,between direct and indirec
18、t cost05:53.93Kaplan was one of the early exponents of so-called activity-based costing (ABC)05:59.71Under this approach, managers strive to spotcost-drivers,i.e the factors influencing the costs of the produc06:08.30The philosophy of ABC proved alluring especially to the consultancy firms alert to
19、a good marketing opportunit06:16.11But although most of the big accountancy firms have in recent years taken on squads of ABC consultant06:22.59it has always been very difficult to tease out any example of ABC being used in practice06:28.41The argument against identifying clients is usually that they are doing so well out of ABC that competitors should not be allowed to find ou
