L6 Flashcards
Accountability
specifies the scope of decisions for which managers are being held accountable during their performance evaluation
How can managers or teams performance be assessed?
using key performance indicators (KPI) that they can control
Cost center
- suitable if team only controls costs (actual costs vs. budget) (input price variance) (input efficiency variance)
Revenue center
- suitable if team only controls revenues (revenue vs. target, sales growth, market share)
Profit center
- suitable if team controls cost & revenues
profit vs. target
investment center
- suitable if team controls costs, revenues and asset base
return on investment, residual income
controllability principle
only hold managers responsible for decisions which they can control or, at least, significantly influence
CPC
Contribution by Profit Center
full costing
also called absorption costing, is required by financial reporting standards (satisfies matching principle)
= is the conventional costing system that includes variable and fixed manufacturing costs as part of product cost
variable costing
is connected with the contribution income statement because it separates variabel and fixed costs
What can be a problem with full costing?
Net income determined using full costing is affected by changes in inventory levels. Here, overproduction is boosting profit for the period (because then ending inventory is booked which is subtracted from COGS and then there is a higher gross margin and also a higher net income)
Market-based transfer pricing
if market is competitive, setting the transfer price equal to the market price generally leads to aligned incentives
cost-based transfer price
- is the market price for intermediate products does not exist
variable-cost based TP: - appropriate in case of excess capacity
- unfair to the selling division (cannot recover all the costs)
full-cost based TP: - representative relevant costs for long-run decisions
- little incentives to control costs
arm’s-length standard calls
for international transfers means that setting transfer prices to reflect the price that unrelated parties acting independent would have set