Category: Management Notes

Material cost variance is the difference between the actual cost of direct material used and stand­ard cost of direct materials specified for the output achieved. This variance results from differences between quantities consumed and quantities of materials allowed for production and from differences between prices paid and prices predetermined.

This can be computed by using the following formula:

Material cost variance = (AQ X AP) – (SQ X SP)

Where AQ = Actual quantity

AP = Actual price

SQ = Standard quantity for the actual output 

SP = Standard price

Material Usage Variance:

The material quantity or usage variance results when actual quantities of raw materials used in production differ from standard quantities that should have been used to produce the output achieved. It is that portion of the direct materials cost variance which is due to the difference between the actual quantity used and standard quantity specified.

As a formula, this variance is shown as:

Materials quantity variance = (Actual Quantity – Standard Quantity) x Standard Price

A material usage variance is favourable when the total actual quantity of direct materials used is less than the total standard quantity allowed for the actual output.

(a) Material Mix Variance:

The materials usage or quantity variance can be separated into mix variance and yield variance.

For certain products and processing operations, material mix is an important operating variable, specific grades of materials and quantity are determined before production begins. A mix variance will result when materials are not actually placed into production in the same ratio as the standard formula. For instance, if a product is produced by adding 100 kg of raw material A and 200 kg of raw material B, the standard material mix ratio is 1: 2.

Actual raw materials used must be in this 1: 2 ratio, otherwise a materials mix variance will be found. Material mix variance is usually found in industries, such as textiles, rubber and chemicals, etc. A mix variance may arise because of attempts to achieve cost savings, effective resources utilisation and when the needed raw materials quantities may not be available at the required time.

Materials mix variance is that portion of the materials quantity variance which is due to the difference between the actual composition of a mixture and the standard mixture.

It can be computed by using the following formula:

Material mix variance = (Standard cost of actual quantity of the actual mixture – Standard cost of actual quantity of the standard mixture)

Or

Materials mix variance = (Actual mix – Revised standard mix of actual input) x Standard price

(b) Materials Yield Variance:

Materials yield variance explains the remaining portion of the total materials quantity variance. It is that portion of materials usage variance which is due to the difference between the actual yield obtained and standard yield specified (in terms of actual inputs). In other words, yield variance occurs when the output of the final product does not correspond with the output that could have been obtained by using the actual inputs. In some industries like sugar, chemicals, steel, etc. actual yield may differ from expected yield based on actual input resulting into yield variance.

The total of materials mix variance and materials yield variance equals materials quantity or usage variance. When there is no materials mix variance, the materials yield variance equals the total materials quantity variance. Accordingly, mix and yield variances explain distinct parts of the total materials usage variance and are additive.

The formula for computing yield variance is as follows:

Yield Variance = (Actual yield – Standard Yield specified) x Standard cost per unit

Materials Price Variance:

A materials price variance occurs when raw materials are purchased at a price different from standard price. It is that portion of the direct materials which is due to the difference between actual price paid and standard price specified and cost variance multiplied by the actual quantity. Expressed as a formula,

Materials price variance = (Actual price – Standard price) x Actual quantity

Materials price variance is un-favourable when the actual price paid exceeds the predetermined standard price. It is advisable that materials price variance should be calculated for materials purchased rather than materials used. Purchase of materials is an earlier event than the use of materials.

Therefore, a variance based on quantity purchased is basically an earlier report than a variance based on quantity actually used. This is quite beneficial from the viewpoint of performance measurement and corrective action. An early report will help the management in measuring the performance so that poor performance can be corrected or good performance can be expanded at an early date.

Recognizing material price variances at the time of purchase lets the firm carry all units of the same materials at one price—the standard cost of the material, even if the firm did not purchase all units of the materials at the same price. Using one price for the same materials facilities management control and simplifies accounting work.

If a direct materials price variance is not recorded until the materials are issued to production, the direct materials are carried on the books at their actual purchase prices. Deviations of actual purchase prices from the standard price may not be known until the direct materials are issued to production.

Activity-based costing (ABC) is a methodology for more precisely allocating overhead costs by assigning them to activities. Once costs are assigned to activities, the costs can be assigned to the cost objects that use those activities. The system can be employed for the targeted reduction of overhead costs. ABC works best in complex environments, where there are many machines and products, and tangled processes that are not easy to sort out. Conversely, it is of less use in a streamlined environment where production processes are abbreviated.

The Activity Based Costing Process Flow

Activity-based costing is best explained by walking through its various steps. They are:

1. Identify costs. The first step in ABC is to identify those costs that we want to allocate. This is the most critical step in the entire process, since we do not want to waste time with an excessively broad project scope. For example, if we want to determine the full cost of a distribution channel, we will identify advertising and warehousing costs related to that channel, but will ignore research costs, since they are related to products, not channels.
2. Load secondary cost pools. Create cost pools for those costs incurred to provide services to other parts of the company, rather than directly supporting a company’s products or services. The contents of secondary cost pools typically include computer services and administrative salaries, and similar costs. These costs are later allocated to other cost pools that more directly relate to products and services. There may be several of these secondary cost pools, depending upon the nature of the costs and how they will be allocated.
3. Load primary cost pools. Create a set of cost pools for those costs more closely aligned with the production of goods or services. It is very common to have separate cost pools for each product line, since costs tend to occur at this level. Such costs can include research and development, advertising, procurement, and distribution. Similarly, you might consider creating cost pools for each distribution channel, or for each facility. If production batches are of greatly varying lengths, then consider creating cost pools at the batch level, so that you can adequately assign costs based on batch size.
4. Measure activity drivers. Use a data collection system to collect information about the activity drivers that are used to allocate the costs in secondary cost pools to primary cost pools, as well as to allocate the costs in primary cost pools to cost objects. It can be expensive to accumulate activity driver information, so use activity drivers for which information is already being collected, where possible.
5. Allocate costs in secondary pools to primary pools. Use activity drivers to apportion the costs in the secondary cost pools to the primary cost pools.
6. Charge costs to cost objects. Use an activity driver to allocate the contents of each primary cost pool to cost objects. There will be a separate activity driver for each cost pool. To allocate the costs, divide the total cost in each cost pool by the total amount of activity in the activity driver, to establish the cost per unit of activity. Then allocate the cost per unit to the cost objects, based on their use of the activity driver.
7. Formulate reports. Convert the results of the ABC system into reports for management consumption. For example, if the system was originally designed to accumulate overhead information by geographical sales region, then report on revenues earned in each region, all direct costs, and the overhead derived from the ABC system. This gives management a full cost view of the results generated by each region.
8. Act on the information. The most common management reaction to an ABC report is to reduce the quantity of activity drivers used by each cost object. Doing so should reduce the amount of overhead cost being used.

We have now arrived at a complete ABC allocation of overhead costs to those cost objects that deserve to be charged with overhead costs. By doing so, managers can see which activity drivers need to be reduced in order to shrink a corresponding amount of overhead cost. For example, if the cost of a single purchase order is $100, managers can focus on letting the production system automatically place purchase orders, or on using procurement cards as a way to avoid purchase orders. Either solution results in fewer purchase orders and therefore lower purchasing department costs.

Uses of Activity Based Costing

The fundamental advantage of using an ABC system is to more precisely determine how overhead is used. Once you have an ABC system, you can obtain better information about the following issues:

• Activity costs. ABC is designed to track the cost of activities, so you can use it to see if activity costs are in line with industry standards. If not, ABC is an excellent feedback tool for measuring the ongoing cost of specific services as management focuses on cost reduction.
• Customer profitability. Though most of the costs incurred for individual customers are simply product costs, there is also an overhead component, such as unusually high customer service levels, product return handling, and cooperative marketing agreements. An ABC system can sort through these additional overhead costs and help you determine which customers are actually earning you a reasonable profit. This analysis may result in some unprofitable customers being turned away, or more emphasis being placed on those customers who are earning the company its largest profits.
• Distribution cost. The typical company uses a variety of distribution channels to sell its products, such as retail, Internet, distributors, and mail order catalogs. Most of the structural cost of maintaining a distribution channel is overhead, so if you can make a reasonable determination of which distribution channels are using overhead, you can make decisions to alter how distribution channels are used, or even to drop unprofitable channels.
• Make or buy. ABC provides a comprehensive view of every cost associated with the in-house manufacture of a product, so that you can see precisely which costs will be eliminated if an item is outsourced, versus which costs will remain.
• Margins. With proper overhead allocation from an ABC system, you can determine the margins of various products, product lines, and entire subsidiaries. This can be quite useful for determining where to position company resources to earn the largest margins.
• Minimum price. Product pricing is really based on the price that the market will bear, but the marketing manager should know what the cost of the product is, in order to avoid selling a product that will lose a company money on every sale. ABC is very good for determining which overhead costs should be included in this minimum cost, depending upon the circumstances under which products are being sold.
• Production facility cost. It is usually quite easy to segregate overhead costs at the plant-wide level, so you can compare the costs of production between different facilities.

Clearly, there are many valuable uses for the information provided by an ABC system. However, this information will only be available if you design the system to provide the specific set of data needed for each decision. If you install a generic ABC system and then use it for the above decisions, you may find that it does not provide the information that you need. Ultimately, the design of the system is determined by a cost-benefit analysis of which decisions you want it to assist with, and whether the cost of the system is worth the benefit of the resulting information.

Problems with Activity Based Costing

Many companies initiate ABC projects with the best of intentions, only to see a very high proportion of the projects either fail or eventually lapse into disuse. There are several reasons for these issues, which are:

• Cost pool volume. The advantage of an ABC system is the high quality of information that it produces, but this comes at the cost of using a large number of cost pools – and the more cost pools there are, the greater the cost of managing the system. To reduce this cost, run an ongoing analysis of the cost to maintain each cost pool, in comparison to the utility of the resulting information. Doing so should keep the number of cost pools down to manageable proportions.
• Installation time. ABC systems are notoriously difficult to install, with multi-year installations being the norm when a company attempts to install it across all product lines and facilities. For such comprehensive installations, it is difficult to maintain a high level of management and budgetary support as the months roll by without installation being completed. Success rates are much higher for smaller, more targeted ABC installations.
• Multi-department data sources. An ABC system may require data input from multiple departments, and each of those departments may have greater priorities than the ABC system. Thus, the larger the number of departments involved in the system, the greater the risk that data inputs will fail over time. This problem can be avoided by designing the system to only need information from the most supportive managers.
• Project basis. Many ABC projects are authorized on a project basis, so that information is only collected once; the information is useful for a company’s current operational situation, and it gradually declines in usefulness as the operational structure changes over time. Management may not authorize funding for additional ABC projects later on, so ABC tends to be “done” once and then discarded. To mitigate this issue, build as much of the ABC data collection structure into the existing accounting system, so that the cost of these projects is reduced; at a lower cost, it is more likely that additional ABC projects will be authorized in the future.
• Reporting of unused time. When a company asks its employees to report on the time spent on various activities, they have a strong tendency to make sure that the reported amounts equal 100% of their time. However, there is a large amount of slack time in anyone’s work day that may involve breaks, administrative meetings, playing games on the Internet, and so forth. Employees usually mask these activities by apportioning more time to other activities. These inflated numbers represent misallocations of costs in the ABC system, sometimes by quite substantial amounts.
• Separate data set. An ABC system rarely can be constructed to pull all of the information it needs directly from the general ledger. Instead, it requires a separate database that pulls in information from several sources, only one of which is existing general ledger accounts. It can be quite difficult to maintain this extra database, since it calls for significant extra staff time for which there may not be an adequate budget. The best work-around is to design the system to require the minimum amount of additional information other than that which is already available in the general ledger.
• Targeted usage. The benefits of ABC are most apparent when cost accounting information is difficult to discern, due to the presence of multiple product lines, machines being used for the production of many products, numerous machine setups, and so forth – in other words, in complex production environments. If a company does not operate in such an environment, then it may spend a great deal of money on an ABC installation, only to find that the resulting information is not overly valuable.

The broad range of issues noted here should make it clear that ABC tends to follow a bumpy path in many organizations, with a tendency for its usefulness to decline over time. Of the problem mitigation suggestions noted here, the key point is to construct a highly targeted ABC system that produces the most critical information at a reasonable cost. If that system takes root in your company, then consider a gradual expansion, during which you only expand further if there is a clear and demonstrable benefit in doing so. The worst thing you can do is to install a large and comprehensive ABC system, since it is expensive, meets with the most resistance, and is the most likely to fail over the long term.

Fixation of selling price of a product is, no doubt, one of the most significant factors in modern management.

It becomes necessary for various purposes, like, under normal circumstances of the interest; at trade depression, accepting additional order etc.

Under normal conditions, according to Financial Accounting technique, the selling price of the product must cover the total cost plus a certain margin of profit. But, under Marginal Costing technique, the price must equal the marginal cost plus a certain amount which depends on the nature, variety, demand and supply, policy pricing and other related factors.

Needless to mention that, if the selling price of the product is fixed at Marginal Cost, the amount of loss will be the amount of fixed overheads and the amount of loss will be same or lower if the production is suspended or closed down.

That is why selling in all the periods/loss must be higher than Marginal Cost. In this regard we should remember that it would be easier for us if profitability of a product is known while fixation of selling price.

Illustration:

X Ltd. has an average P/V ratio of 50%. The Marginal Cost of a product is estimated at Rs. 30. What will be the amount of selling price?

Solution:

If selling price is Rs. 100, Variable Cost will be Rs. 50 i.e., contribution will be Rs. 50.

Thus, P/V Ratio = C/S = Rs. 50/Rs.100 = ½ or 50%

So, the selling price which have a marginal cost of Rs. 60 should be:

100 /50 x Rs. 30 = Rs. 60

Alternatively

P/V Ratio = S – V/S

or,.

Variable Cost/Sales = 50/100

Selling Price will be = Variable Cost/sales = Rs. 30/50%= Rs. 60

Management accounting involves collecting, analyzing, and reporting information about the operations and finances of a business. These reports are generally directed to the managers of a business, rather than to any external entities, such as shareholders or lenders. The functions of management accounting include:

• Margin Analysis: Determining the amount of profit or cash flow that a business generates from a specific product, product line, customer, store, or region.
• Break even Analysis: Calculating the mix of contribution margin and unit volume at which a business exactly breaks even, which is useful for determining price points for products and services.
• Constraint Analysis: Understanding where the primary bottlenecks are in a company, and how they impact the ability of the business to earn revenues and profits.
• Target Costing: Assisting in the design of new products by accumulating the costs of new designs, comparing them to target cost levels, and reporting this information to management.
• Inventory Valuation: Determining the direct costs of cost of goods sold and inventory items, as well as allocating overhead costs to these items.
• Trend Analysis: Reviewing the trend line of various costs incurred to see if there are any unusual variances from the long-term pattern, and reporting the reasons for these changes to management.
• Transaction Analysis: After spotting a variance through trend analysis, a person engaged in managerial accounting might dive deeper into the underlying information and examine individual transactions, in order to understand exactly what caused the variance. This information is then aggregated into a report to management.
• Capital Budgeting Analysis: Examining proposals to acquire fixed assets, both to determine if they are needed, and what the appropriate form of financing may be with which to acquire them.

1. Preparation of Organization Manual

The organization manual contains the duties, powers, scope and responsibilities of each executive in an organization. Moreover, it indicates the means and line of communication between the executives. This prevents the overlapping of functions.

2. Appointment and Training of Employees

Right candidates should be appointed and suitable training should be provided to them. If so, they can perform their work independently very effectively.

3. Preparation of Various Forms and Reports

The top management can design various forms and decide the contents of reports according to the needs of managerial decision making. The main objective of preparing various forms and reports is avoiding “Bureaucratization”.

4. Classification and Codification of Accounts

The financial accounting information is classified and codified for effective analysis and interpretation. The accounts are classified on the basis of nature of accounts. The codification accounts facilitate for easy identification of accounts.

5. Setting up of Cost Centres

There is a need of setting up of cost centre, profit centre, investment centre and budget centre. If so, only relevant information is collected and analysed in relation to each of them.

6. Integration of Cost and Financial Data

Both cost accounting data and financial accounting data are used in the management accounting. Hence, there is a need of suitable system to integrate both cost accounts and financial accounts. It avoids duplication of data. The integration system should be accurate and reliable.

7. Introducing Management Accounting Techniques

The needs of one business organization is differing from another. The top management can introduce various management accounting techniques on the needs of organization and practicability.

8. Setting up of Budgetary Control System

Every organization should prepare the budgets in order to achieve its objectives economically and efficiently. Hence, the management should establish suitable budgetary control system. Moreover, the proposed system should be flexible and accommodate the changes in future.

9. Using of Operations Research Techniques

Every business is running under fast changing economic, political and social environment. Everyday number of new types of problems may be encountered by the management. The Operations Research Techniques are highly useful to cope with the emerging problems.

10. Formulating Standard Costing Techniques

The top management can fix the standard for every business activity relating to cost and revenue. If so, the actual performance can be used to measure the deviations from the standard. Thus, standards are fixed at all levels. The standard should be one which can be adopted by a normal employee.

Management accounting is an important tool of management. Hence, it serves the management in many ways. Even though, the management accounting has some limitations or disadvantages. They are briefly explained below:

Limitations or disadvantages of management accounting

1. Based on Financial and Cost Records

Both financial and cost accounting information are used in the management accounting system. The accuracy and validity of management account is largely based on the accuracy if financial and cost records maintained. These records determine the Strength and weakness of management accounting.

2. Personal Bias

The analysis and interpretation of financial statements are fully depending upon the capability of the analyst and interpreter. Hence, personal prejudices and bias of an individual can affect the objectivity and effectiveness of the conclusions and recommendations.

3. Lack of Knowledge and Understanding of the Related Subjects

Financial accounting, cost accounting, statistics, economics, psychology and sociology are the related subjects of management accounting. The organization can derive more benefits of management accounting if the management accountant has thorough knowledge over related subjects. If not so, the success of management accounting system is questionable.

4. Provides only Data

Under management accounting system, many alternatives are developed to solve a problem and submitted before the management. Out of the many alternatives available, the management can select any one of alternatives or even discard all of them. Hence, management accounting can only provide data and not prescribe any course of action.

5. Preference to Intuitive Decision Making

Scientific decisions can be taken with the help of using management accounting techniques. But, majority of the management accountant and top level executives prefer their past experience and intuition in making business decisions. The reason is that an intuitive decision making is very simple and easy.

6. Management Accounting is only a Tool

The management accountant is using the management accounting system as a tool to give advice and facilitate the management for decision making. The actual decisions, their implementation and follow up action are the prerogative of the management.

7. Continuity and Participation

The decisions are taken by the management. Their implementation is vested in the hands of management accountant. The continuous efforts of management accountant and full participation of all levels of management are necessary for successful operation of management accounting system.

8. Broad Based Scope

The scope of management accounting is very wide since it considers both monetary and non-monetary transactions of the business organization. The limited knowledge and experience of the management accountant can lead to prepare the data unreliable and undependable.

9. Costly Installation

The cost of installation of management accounting system is very high. Hence, a small business organization can not bear the cost of such installation. Moreover, the utility of this system is restricted only to big and complex organizations.

10. Resistance to Change

The installation of management accounting system brings some changes in the organizational set up and accounting practice. The personnel concerned may resist such changes unless they are getting confidence.

11. Evolutionary State

Management accounting is a recent development discipline. The utility of management accounting is depend upon the intelligent interpretation of the data available for managerial use. Hence, it is presumed that the management accounting stands in evolutionary stage.

12. Unquantifiable Variables

Management accounting seeks to interpret and evaluate an objective historical event on record in terms of money. But, in practice, the business organization is facing many problems which cannot be exposed.

1. Difficulty to analyse overhead: Separation of costs into fixed and variable is a difficult problem. In marginal costing, semi-variable or semi-fixed costs are not considered.
2. Time element ignored: Fixed costs and variable costs are different in the short run; but in the long run, all costs are variable. In the long run all costs change at varying levels of operation. When new plants and equipment are introduced, fixed costs and variable costs will vary.
3. Unrealistic assumption: Assumption of sale price will remain the same at different levels of operation. In real life, they may change and give unrealistic results.
4. Difficulty in the fixation of price: Under marginal costing, selling price is fixed on the basis of contribution. In case of cost plus contract, it is very difficult to fix price.
5. Complete information not given: It does not explain the reason for increase in production or sales.
6. Significance lost: In capital-intensive industries, fixed costs occupy major portions in the total cost. But marginal costs cover only variable costs. As such, it loses its significance in capital industries.
7. Problem of variable overheads: Marginal costing overcomes the problem of over and under-absorption of fixed overheads. Yet there is the problem in the case of variable overheads.
8. Sales-oriented: Successful business has to go in a balanced way in respect of selling production functions. But marginal costing is criticised on account of its attaching over- importance to selling function. Thus it is said to be sales-oriented. Production function is given less importance.
9. Unreliable stock valuation: Under marginal costing stock of work-in-progress and finished stock is valued at variable cost only. No portion of fixed cost is added to the value of stocks. Profit determined, under this method, is depressed.
10. Claim for loss of stock: Insurance claim for loss or damage of stock on the basis of such a valuation will be unfavourable to business.
11. Automation: Now-a-days increasing automation is leading to increase in fixed costs. If such increasing fixed costs are ignored, the costing system cannot be effective and depend­able.

Marginal costing, if applied alone, will not be much use, unless it is combined with other techniques like standard costing and budgetary control.

Diversification of Products:

In order to capture a new market or to utilise idle facilities etc., it may so happen that a new product may be introduced in the market together with the existing one. Naturally, the question arises before us whether the same will be a profitable product one.

In this regard it may be mentioned that the new product may be introduced only when the same is capable of contributing something against fixed cost and profit. Fixed cost will not be considered here on the assumption that the same will not increase, i.e., the new product will be produced out of existing resources.

Marginal Costing Application # 3. Selection of Most Profitable Product-Mix:

If any firm produces more than one product it may have to decide in what ratio should the products be produced or sold in order to earn maximum profit. However, the marginal costing techniques help us to a great extent while determining the most profitable product or sales mix.

Contribution under various mix will be determined first. Then the product which gives the highest contribution must be given the highest priority, and vice versa. Similarly, any product which gives negative contribution should be discontinued.

The following illustration will, however, make the principle clear:

Illustration:

The directors of a company are considering sales budget for the next budget period. From the following information you are required to show clearly to management:

(i) The marginal product cost and the contribution per unit;

(ii) The total contribution resulting from each of following sale mixtures;

Sales Mixture:

(a) 100 units of product A and 200 of B

(b) 150 units of product A and 150 of B

(c) 200 units of product A and 100 of B

Recommend which of the sale-mixtures should be adopted.

Solution:

(ii) From the above Comparative Contribution statement, it becomes clear that as P/V Ratio of Product A is higher in comparison with the Product B, Product A is more profitable one. And, as such, the mixtures which consider the maximum number of Product A would be the most profitable one which is proved from the following table:

Sales Mixture (C) i.e., 200 units of Product A and 100 units of Product B will yield highest contribution.