Activity-Based Costing Organizations That Need Help Being Essay

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Activity-Based Costing

Organizations that need help being more efficient and cost effective look to different concepts for help, one such concept is activity-based costing. Activity-based costing is used to manage an organization better and is meant to help with decision making by coming up with better information about the cost and performance of activities, resources and objects that consume resources ("Activity-based management -- an overview," 2001). This essay will discuss ABC and activity-based management as well as how ABC is different from other concepts and explain three of those concepts; lean-manufacturing, just-in-time and theory of constraints.

ABC is used by the manufacturing industries, the financial service industry, and communications and public service sectors (Blocher, 2008). Activity-based management followed activity-based costing. Taking data from ABC, it uses it to manage the products, portfolios and business processes of the organization in better ways ("Activity-based management -- an overview," 2001). There are other systems that attempt what ABC attempts, but they differ in some aspects. A lot of other systems are volume-based as opposed to activity-based.

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The information gathered by ABC is based on activities performed for the cost object instead of the volume of products produced, which has little to do with the consumption of resource cost (Blocher, 2008).

Activity-based costing tends to be most beneficial for larger industrial firms with more than one product and/or services (Blocher, 2008). Companies using ABC benefit because the control they gain over activities allows them to control cost ("Activity-based management -- an overview," 2001). Companies besides large industrial firms can successfully use ABC. One such company is the Hospice of Central Kentucky. After using activity-based costing, the hospice negotiated with their insurance company and got better payment terms more beneficial for them and were also encouraged to educate their referral sources to bring patients to the hospital before acute care became necessary, potentially saving them from doing more expensive procedures (Chung, n.d.).

There are other systems used by organizations to help with efficiency and reducing costs. Three of which are lean-manufacturing, just-in-time….....

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Latest APA Format (6th edition)

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"Activity-Based Costing Organizations That Need Help Being" (2011, December 07) Retrieved May 6, 2024, from
https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/activity-based-costing-organizations-need-53260

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"Activity-Based Costing Organizations That Need Help Being" 07 December 2011. Web.6 May. 2024. <
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Latest Chicago Format (16th edition)

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"Activity-Based Costing Organizations That Need Help Being", 07 December 2011, Accessed.6 May. 2024,
https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/activity-based-costing-organizations-need-53260