1. 2 Costing Systems: Job Order Costing Managerial Accounting 10e
C H A P T E R
Costing Systems:
Job Order Costing
Managerial Accounting
10e
Crosson
Needles
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2. Concepts Underlying Product Costing Systems
A product costing system is used to account for an organization’s product costs and to provide timely and accurate cost information for pricing, cost planning and control, inventory valuation, and financial statement preparation.
Two basic types of product costing systems have been developed: job order costing systems and process costing systems.
The typical product costing system combines parts of job order costing and process costing to create a hybrid system known as an operations costing system.
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3. Job Order and Process Costing Systems
A job order costing system is used by companies that make unique or special-order products.
A job order costing system measures and recognizes the costs of direct materials, direct labor, and overhead to a specific batch of products or a specific job order (a customer order for a specific number of specially designed, made-to-order products) by using job order cost cards.
A job order cost card is usually an electronic or paper document on which all costs incurred in the production of a particular job order are recorded and matched with the job’s revenues.
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4. Job Order and Process Costing Systems
A process costing system is used by companies that produce large amounts of similar products or liquid products or that have long, continuous production runs of identical products.
It first traces the costs of direct materials, direct labor, and overhead to processes, departments, or work cells and then assigns the costs to the products manufactured by those processes, departments, or work cells during a specific period using a process cost report.
A process cost report is usually an electronic or paper document prepared every period for each process, department, or work cell.
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5. Job Order Costing in a Manufacturing Company
Job order cost cards and cost flows through the inventory accounts form the core of a job order costing system.
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6. A Manufacturer’s Job Order Cost Card
A manufacturer’s job order cost card typically has space for direct materials, direct labor, and overhead costs. It also includes the job order number, product specifications, customer name, date of the order, projected completion date, and a cost summary.
As a job incurs direct materials and direct labor costs, its job order cost card is updated.
Overhead is also posted to the job order cost card at the predetermined rate.
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7. Computation of Unit Cost
When a job is finished, the costs of direct materials, direct labor, and overhead that have been recorded on its job order cost card are totaled.
The product unit cost is then computed.
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8. Job Order Costing in a Service Organization
Many service organizations use a job order costing system to compute the cost of rendering services.
Job order cost cards are used to keep track of the labor, materials and supplies, and service overhead incurred for each job.
To cover these costs and earn a profit, many service organizations base jobs on cost-plus contracts, which require the customer to pay all costs incurred in performing the job plus a predetermined amount of profit.
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9. Cost Allocation
Cost allocation is the process of assigning a collection of indirect costs, such as overhead, to a specific cost object, such as a product or service, a department, or an operating activity, using an allocation base known as a cost driver.
A cost driver might be direct labor hours, direct labor costs, units produced, or another activity base that has a cause-and-effect relationship with the cost.
As the cost driver increases in volume, it causes the cost pool—the collection of indirect costs assigned to a cost object—to increase in amount.
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10. Allocating the Costs of Overhead (slide 1 of 2)
Step 1: Planning the Overhead Rate—Before a period begins, managers determine cost pools and cost drivers and calculate a predetermined overhead rate as follows.
Step 2: Applying the Overhead Rate—As units of the product or service are produced during the period, the estimated overhead costs are assigned to the product or service using the predetermined overhead rate as follows.
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11. Allocating the Costs of Overhead (slide 2 of 2)
Step 3: Recording Actual Overhead Costs—The actual overhead costs, such as indirect materials, indirect labor, depreciation, and property taxes, are recorded as they are incurred during the period.
Step 4: Reconciling the Applied and Actual Overhead Amounts—At the end of the period, the difference between the applied and actual overhead costs is calculated and reconciled.
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12. Overapplied Overhead
If the overhead costs applied to production during the period are greater than the actual overhead costs, the difference in the amounts represents overapplied overhead costs.
If the difference is immaterial, the Overhead account is debited and the Cost of Goods Sold or Cost of Sales account is credited by the difference.
If the difference is material for the products produced, adjustments are made to the accounts affected—that is, Work in Process Inventory, Finished Goods Inventory, and Cost of Goods Sold accounts.
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13. Underapplied Overhead
If the overhead costs applied to production during the period are less than the actual overhead costs, the difference represents underapplied overhead costs.
If the difference is immaterial, the entry would be:
If the difference is material, adjustments are made to the Work in Process Inventory, Finished Goods Inventory, and Cost of Goods Sold accounts.
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14. Actual Cost of Goods Sold or Cost of Sales
The adjustment for overapplied or underapplied overhead costs is necessary to reflect the actual overhead costs on the income statement.
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15. Allocating Overhead: The Traditional Approach
The traditional approach to applying overhead costs to a product or service is to use a single plantwide overhead rate.
This approach is especially useful when companies manufacture only one product or a few very similar products that require the same production processes and production-related activities.
The total overhead costs constitute one cost pool, and a traditional activity base—such as direct labor hours, direct labor costs, machine hours, or units of production—is the cost driver.
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16. Allocating Overhead: The ABC Approach
Activity-based costing (ABC) is a more accurate method of assigning overhead costs to products or services.
It categorizes all indirect costs by activity, traces the indirect costs to those activities, and assigns activity costs to products or services using a cost driver related to the cause of the cost.
There will be an activity cost rate for each activity pool, and managers must select an appropriate number of activity pools instead of the traditional plantwide rate for overhead.
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17. Supporting the Management Process
Managers use unit cost information throughout the management process to fulfill the concepts of planning and forecasting operations, organizing and coordinating resources and data, and commanding and controlling the organization’s resources by:
Planning
Performing
Evaluating
Communicating
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