Difficuly Flashcards
What is a cost centre?
Production or service location, a function, and activity or an item of equipment for which costs are accumulated
What is a time series?
Series of figures recorded over time
What is a trend?
Some sort of long term movement
What is seasonal variation?
Short term fluctuations in value due to different circumstances which occur at different times of year
What is cyclical variations?
Economic cycles of booms and slumps
What is residual variations?
Irregular, random fluctuations in data usually caused by factors specific to time series
What is the purpose of a budget?
Planning
Control and evaluation
Co-ordination
Communication
Motivation
Authorisation
How do you calculate quantity variance?
(Actual quantity - budgeted quantity) x budgeted weighted average margin
What are the disadvantages of marginal costing?
When fixed costs and overheads are high the marginal cost and sales is only a small proportion of costs
Not useful for measuring product costs and long term
Treatment of direct labour as a variable cost is unrealistic as salaries are fixed
What is batch level?
Activities consuming resources in proportion to number of batches e.g. machine set ups
What is unit level?
Activities where consumption is strongly correlated with number of units produced e.g. direct materials
What is product level?
Consumption of resources related to existence of particular product e.g. admin
What is facility level?
Ground maintenance, plot security
What is zero based budgeting?
All activities re-evaluated each time a budget is formulated. Starts with assumption that function does not exist.
What are the advantages of zero based budgeting?
Creates environment that accepts change
Better focus on goals
Forward looking
Better performance measures
What are the disadvantages of zero based budgeting?
Time consuming
Expensive
Encourages short term ism
Management may lose focus on true cost drivers
How do u calculate value of perfect information?
Expected profit with information - expected profit without perfect information
What is incremental budgeting?
Traditional approach.
Take the previous years budget and add on a percentage to allow for inflation and other cost increases
What are the advantages of incremental budgeting?
Simple
Cheap
Suitable in stable environments
Most practical
What are the disadvantages of incremental budgeting?
Backwards looking
Builds on previous inefficiencies
Doesn’t remove waste
Unsuited to changing environments
Targets are too easy
Activities are not justified
Encourages over spending
What are the benefits of activity based budgeting?
Useful when overheads are significant
Better cost control
Better cost management
Useful for TQM environments
What are the disadvantages of activity based budgeting?
Expensive to implement
Only suited to ABC users
What is beyond budgeting?
An approach to budgeting that tries to resolve the Weaknesses and limitations of traditional approaches to budgeting
What are the advantages of full cost plus pricing?
Required profit will be made if budgeted sales volumes are achieved
It is quick and cheap to employ
Can be useful in justifying selling prices to customers
What are the problems with full cost plus pricing?
Mark up can be arbitrary and may not properly account for factors
If prices set on basis of expected volume and actual volume turns out to be considerably lower overheads with not be fully recovered
What are the preferences to using marginal costing pricing then full cost pricing?
Just as accurate as cost plu pricing
Gives management the option of pricing below full cost when times are bad
Useful in pricing specific one off contracts because it only account for costs which are likely to change because of the new contract
What are the criticisms of marginal cost plus pricing?
Ignores other factors such as level of competition
Mark up become more arbitrary than that used in full cost plus pricing