[雙語翻譯]成本管理外文翻譯--成本管理中唯一正確的計(jì)算方法從作業(yè)成本法的角度（英文）

1、Journal of Business E-mail: skoda@dti.sk DOI: 10.12735/jbm.v3i3p08 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.12735/ jbm.v3i3p08 Abstract In late 1980’s National Association of Accountants had introduced Activity-based

2、costing – a cost accounting technique which charges organization’s indirect costs to the activities that cause the costs to be incurred and then distributes costs of activities to the products that cause the activities

3、 to be performed. Activity-based costing as a management tool has proved its relevance and found its proponents among academics and managers. Introduction of the time aspect into Activity-based costing proved that it

4、is still attracting attention and undergoing development in order to become more accurate. The paramount goal of the implementation is to prove the increased effectiveness and superiority of cost management when using

5、Activity-based costing. It will be achieved by allocation of overhead costs to products with the intention to determine unit costs. This process of allocation will increase the reliability of cost information and impro

6、ve the information base for product decisions. Moreover, we expect that this approach will more or less alter the profit margin of individual products. This kind of information is very useful when evaluating price-rela

7、ted or keep/drop decisions. JEL Classifications: M40, M41, M49 Keywords: ABC model, cost management, cost driver, implementation, overhead costs, direct costs, indirect costs 1. Importance of Management Cost Accounting

8、 Management accounting is defined as a system that is concerned with the provision of information to people within the organization to help them make better decisions and improve the efficiency and the effectiveness of

9、 existing operations (Drury, 2005). Management accounting as one of the subsystems of accounting was quite underdeveloped throughout the 20th century, but regained its position back in 1980’s when professionals and aca

10、demics started to criticize its lack of innovation and relevance of its methods in rapidly changing environment. One of the most important and pioneering title was the Johnson and Kaplan’s book called Relevance Lost: T

11、he Rise and Fall of Management accounting published in 1987. This underdevelopment can be attributed mainly to the demand for product cost information for external users and simple and inaccurate methods that were used

12、 for allocation of costs to products (Johnson & Kaplan, 1987). These product costs designed primarily for financial accounting purposes were then used in day-to-day decision making. Unlike financial and tax account

13、ing, which serve to keep the organization in compliance with laws and regulations, an organization’s www.todayscience.org/jbm.php Journal of Business & Management Vol. 3, Issue 3, 2014 ~ 10 ~ Direct costing

14、system is the simplest system in terms of cost assignment because it allocates only direct costs to cost object. It is obvious that the biggest disadvantage is that it does not allocate indirect costs (overheads). It i

15、s only a partial system useful for business with small or negligible share of overheads on total costs. This system would not work for businesses with high share of overheads because the process of assignment would be

16、arbitrary and lead to faulty and misleading decisions. Traditional absorption costing system and activity based costing system allocate indirect costs to cost object. The purpose of cost allocation technique is to find

17、 an indirect measure how to allocate indirect costs to cost object. This can be done using measures such as allocation base and cost driver. These are measures that establish some kind of consumption pattern among indi

18、rect cost and cost object. When the allocation base significantly captures the relationship between the indirect cost and the cost object then the term cause-and-effect allocation is used. In case that the allocation

19、base is rather a weak measure then arbitrary allocation is the appropriate expression. An example of arbitrary allocation is the usage of direct labor costs/hours as an allocation base for allocating indirect costs to

20、cost object. As direct labor costs/hours do not determine the amount of indirect costs incurred, this would likely lead to inaccurate allocation of indirect costs. Figure 1 describes the process of cost allocation and

21、cost tracing. Source: Drury (2005). Figure 1. Process of cost allocation and cost tracing The suitability of traditional absorption costing system may be questionable and managers may start to feel concerned whether it

22、is the right moment to revise this kind of costing system. We picked up eight points set by Hicks (2002) that can serve as one out of approaches how to evaluate the costing system and discover the need for change: (1)

23、Direct labor operations have been replaced with automated equipment since the costing system was lastly revised. This is a very crucial point because it reveals a considerable deficiency of the traditional costing syst

24、em. When direct labor remains the allocation base for indirect costs it may distort the process of allocation of indirect costs to cost object because it no longer determines the relationship between consumption of res

25、ources and cost objects. (2) Indirect costs are becoming a much larger percentage of total costs or overhead rates have been increasing during recent years. Nowadays, manufacturing companies substitute labor with cap

26、ital, mainly machinery, what in turn increases the importance of indirect costs. This proves that direct labor as a base for allocating indirect costs is irrelevant as it is substantially less than indirect costs and a