1.4 Activity-based budgeting Traditionally, there has been a tendency to take an incremental approach to budgeting for overhead costs, and prepare next year’s budget by simply adding a percentage to the current year’s budget, to allow for inflation. ABB is an alternative method which may produce more accurate budgets and enable greater control of overhead expenditure.
ABB is defined as: ‘a method of budgeting based on an activity framework utilising cost driver data in the budget-setting and variance feedback processes’.
The advantages of ABB are similar to those provided by activity-based costing (ABC).
§ It draws attention to the costs of ‘overhead activities’. This can be important where overhead costs are a large proportion of total operating costs.
§ It provides information for the control of activity costs, by assuming that they are variable, at least in the longer term.
§ It provides a useful basis for monitoring and controlling overhead costs, by drawing management attention to the actual costs of activities and comparing actual costs with what the activities were expected to cost.
§ It also provides useful control information by emphasising that activity costs might be controllable if the activity volume can be controlled.
§ ABB can provide useful information for a total quality management (TQM) programme, by relating the cost of an activity to the level of service provided (for example, stores’ requisitions processed) – do the user departments feel they are getting a cost-effective service?
Disadvantages of ABB
§ A considerable amount of time and effort might be needed to establish an ABB system, for example to identify the key activities and their cost drivers.
§ ABB might not be appropriate for the organisation and its activities and cost structures.
§ A budget should be prepared on the basis of responsibility centres, with identifiable budget holders made responsible for the performance of their budget centre. A problem with ABB could be to identify clear individual responsibilities for activities.
§ It could be argued that in the short-term many overhead costs are not controllable and do not vary directly with changes in the volume of activity for the cost driver. The only variances to report would be fixed overhead expenditure variances for each activity.
Illustration 4 – ABB
The operating divisions of Z plc have in the past always used a traditional approach to analysing costs into their fixed and variable components. A single measure of activity was used which, for simplicity, was the number of units produced. The new management does not accept that such a simplistic approach is appropriate for budgeting in the modern environment and has requested that the managers adopt an activity-based approach in future.
Explain how ABB would be implemented by the operating divisions of Z plc.
Solution
Step 1 Identify costs pools and cost drivers.
Step 2 Calculate a budgeted cost driver rate based on budgeted cost and budgeted activity.
Step 3 Produce a budget for each department or product by multiplying the budgeted cost driver rate by the expected usage. |
发表于 2012-2-23 17:09:42
