Posted: August 29th, 2022

M4 Response (KE)

ORIGINAL ASSIGNMENT:

 
Assignment 1: Discussion—ABC or Activity-Based Costing
In your readings this module, you were introduced to Activity-Based Costing or ABC. It is a method used to determine a reliable predetermined benchmark for the allocation of overhead costs to the products produced based on their activity levels. In this discussion, we will work a case study on ABC together. For your initial response, attempt to answer the questions yourself and post all the required items into the Discussion Area. You may want to post some elements during different days so the class can work this problem together. Then in your response postings, help each other with misunderstandings or miscalculations.
Tasks:

Examine the case below and then…

Calculate the amount of overhead allocated to small and large advertising campaigns under existing methods.
Apply activity-based costing to calculate the cost per cost driver for each of the cost pools.
Use the costs per cost driver to calculate the activity-based overhead applicable to small and large campaigns.
Calculate the percentage to be added to direct advertising costs to recover overhead costs under activity-based costing.

Merit-o-cracy PLC is a specialist advertising agency. It has been long-established but is experiencing difficulties in winning new business. The Chief Executive believes that its pricing methods are leading to the loss of large customer advertising campaigns while it is consistently winning smaller business.
Merit-o-cracy costs work for pricing purposes on the basis of direct advertising costs (i.e. space or time purchased from newspapers, radio and TV) plus 100%. The 100% is intended to cover all the overheads of the business, which run at $2 million per year. It does not include any profit margin. This budget cost comprises:
Creative staff                                        $500,000

Production staff                                    $750,000

Administrative & support staff              $300,000

Rental and associated costs                  $450,000
Merit-o-cracy classifies its advertising campaigns as either small or large. Of the 350 campaigns the agency wins, about 325 are classified as small. A typical small advertising campaign incurs direct advertising costs of $4,000 each (and therefore is allocated $4,000 of overheads under current methods). The other 25 advertising campaigns are large and incur direct advertising costs of $28,000 each.
Merit-o-cracy’s accountant has heard of activity-based costing. After speaking to the management team, she has gathered information on the most common causes of costs. She believes that creative staff costs are linked to the number of advertising campaigns the agency competes for. Production staff costs are related to the number of advertising campaigns the agency wins. Administrative and support staff costs are related to the number of customers the agency has. Rental and associated costs are people-based and as a similar number of staff is employed in each of the three departments, the costs should be equally shared.
The accountant has also collected data on the activity levels in each of the three departments over the budget period. These are:
            Creative                       

800 advertising campaigns the agency bids for
400 of these are bids for large campaigns and 400 for small campaigns

Production

350 advertising campaigns the agency wins
325 of these are small campaigns and 25 large campaigns

Admin & support           

400 customers the agency services
300 of these are customers with small campaigns and 100 have large campaigns

PEER RESPONSE:

 
ACTIVITY BASED COSTING OF MERIT-O-CRACY PLC CASE STUDY
            Amount allocated to both small and large campaigns of advertising through existing methods.
The use of overhead method ensures that resources are allocated based on the process of direct advertising expenses. The expenses are allocated to their respective areas through analytical procedures to ensure they are correctly matched to their causes.
The overhead costs which, are allocated to the small advertising campaigns are:
= 325*4000.00
=$1,300,000.00
The overhead allocated to large advertising campaigns includes:
= 25*28,000.00
= $700,000.00
The company spends $600,000.00 in advertising in small campaigns than in the large campaigns. The higher expenditure in the small campaigns is a result of more customers who are in the middle class (Drury, 2013). The firm ensures the large population in the middle and lower class gets the information of the product to widen its market (Plank, 2013).
Application of the Activity-Based Costing method in calculation of the cost of each driver in the cost pools.
Cost pools
Amount
Production staff
$750,000.00
Creative staff
$500,000.00
Rental and associated expense
$450,000.00
Administrative and support staff
$300,000.00
Total overhead expense
$2,000,000.00
The production staff consumes the highest amount of money for the firm because of many experienced employees. The employees offer expertise in production that helps in producing higher volumes. The creative staff follows in the second level as they also spend a greater amount in paying their creativity. The rental of the premises used by the firm also follows and the administrative and support has the lowest expenditure because of the few personnel required to run the enterprise.
Activity cost pool
Activity measures
Production
Agency wins
Creative
Agency bids
Administration and support
Agency services
Distribution of the resources consume across the whole activity
Distribution of the resources consumed across the whole activity
                                   Production Creative Admin and support               Total
                                     Wins             bids        services
Large campaigns           25.00             400.00          100.00                                525.00
Small campaigns         325.00             400.00          300.00                              1025.00
Total activity                350 wins        800 bids        400.00                                 –
Allocation of expenses to the respective cost pools
Distribution of the Resources Consumed Across each Activity
Creative  bids
  Production   wins
 Admin & support  services
Total
Large campaigns
$ 250,000
$53,571.40
$75,000
378,571.40
Small  campaigns
$ 250,000
$696,428.60
$ 225,000
1,171,428.60
Other cost
150,000
150,000
150,000
450,000
Total cost
$ 650,000
$ 900,000
$ 450,000
The rental and other associated costs = $450,000.00/3
= 150,000.00
The rates of activity associated with cost pools
Activity Expense Pools
Total expenses
Total Activity
cost per cost driver
Production
$900,000
350 wins
$2,571 per win
Creative                                
$650,000
800 bids
$812.50 per bid
Admin & support
$450,000
400 services
$1,125 per service
Using the expenses in the cost driver to get the expenses of the activity based in both large and small campaigns
production
  Creative
 Admin & support  services
Total
Large campaigns
$ 64,275.00
$325,000.00
$112,500.00
501,775.00
Small campaigns
$ 835,575.00
$325,000.00
$ 337,500.00
1,498,078.00
Total cost
$ 899,850.00
$ 650,000.00
$ 450,000.00
1,999,850.00
The percentage that is added to the cost of direct advertising so as to recover all the costs in the activity based costing.
The large campaigns for advertising are estimated to be overvalued according to the approaches used (Drury, 2013).
The small campaigns the amount added are:
= (1,498,075.00-1,300,000.00)/1,300,000.00
=15%
References
Plank, P. (2013). Introduction. In Price and Product-Mix Decisions Under Different Cost             Systems (pp. 1-5). Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden.
DRURY, C. M. (2013).  Get research paper samples and course-specific study resources under   homework for you course hero writing service – Manage ment and cost accounting. Springer.

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