Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

The Use of Activity Based Costing By Joseph P. Milazzo Masters of Business Administration Hawaii Pacific University Fall 2000 Activity based costing (ABC) is a relative new way to allocate costs to specific processes and services. This system assures that the costs are accurately distributed to the products or services that generated them. ABC illustrates costs more accurately, giving management insight to the cost associated with certain business activities. ABC extends the decision-making skills of management by expanding on traditional costing (job order costing/process order costing) techniques. However, since ABC's introduction in the 1980's, many corporations are not using ABC, despite gained managerial decision making capabilities. Even by the mid-1990s, ABC's use has not spread throughout the accounting industry and its use is not obvious (Selto & Jasinski, 1996). The following article will discuss the pros and cons of the ABC method. Traditional Techniques ABC is an extension of traditional product costing techniques. These techniques are called job order costing and process order costing. A job order costing system arranges costs for each unit as it goes through a production process. A process cost system col