Fundamentals of Cost Accounting 3rd Edition by William N. Lanen, Shannon W. Anderson, Michael Maher

Exercise 4

The manager of an operating department just received a cost report and has made the following comment with respect to the costs allocated from one of the service departments: “This charge to my division doesn’t seem right. The service center installed equipment with more capacity than our division requires. Most of the service department costs are fixed, but we seem to be allocated more costs in periods when other departments use less. We are paying for the excess capacity of other departments when other departments cut their usage levels.” How could this manager’s problem be solved?

Step 1 of 2

Management control system

Management control system is needed to manage the complications arising out of decentralization like dysfunctional decision making. Owners of the organization use structure and procedures of management control system to influence the actions of its managers and other employees to ensure smooth implementation of organizational strategies. Management controls system comprises of three elements such as delegation fo decision making authorities, evaluation of performance and measurement systems and finally awarding compensation and rewards for performance.

Cost accounting system

This is a system designed for inhouse or internal managers and their decision making. Cost accounting information is not needed for comparison with other companies. This information is commonly used in financial accounting also, but it is primarily used by company managers for their decision making. It is important that cost accounting information is relevant for the decision making of the manager.

Cost allocation of service departments

Service departments like human resource, administration, accounts, IT etc. render their services to other user departments which may include production or other service departments also. The costs of these service departments also need to be allocated among other user departments for product and departmental costing purposes. There are different methods used for service costs allocation like direct method, step method and reciprocal method.