Cost factor definition of cost factor by merriamwebster. Cost factor definition is an element or condition related to a unit of product or to an activity or to a service for which money must be spent as raw material, direct labor, and burden. Activitybased costing abc is an accounting method that identifies the activities that a firm performs and then assigns indirect costs to products. Know how companies identify and use cost drivers in activity based costing. In this lesson, we look at various cost drivers for manufacturing overhead, both for firms that manufacture products and those that. Internal management uses the cost of a product to determine the prices of the products they produce.
So you may be wondering, what is meant by the term cost driver. Cost drivers are those factors that cause costs to change. The concept is most commonly used to assign overhead costs to the number of produced units. An active rfid tag has an internal battery and has a longer range than a passive. They include costs like materials, energy, labour, plant, equipment and overheads. It can also be used in activitybased costing analysis to determine the causes of overhead, which can be used to minimize overhead costs. A factor that can causes a change in the cost of an activity. Well, a cost driver is a unit of activity that causes a business to endure costs. For example, if you are to determine the amount of electricity consumed in a. Internal driving forces, which are the things, situations or events that are occurred inside the business and these generally under control of the company.
A cost driver triggers a change in the cost of an activity. An example is a change in the cost of warehousing or a change in the level of production. Cost driver is any activity or series of activities that takes place within an. In accounting, the cost driver definition is a factor that incurs cost. Include both indirect costs and direct costs to compute the full cost of production. An activity can have more than one cost driver attached to it. Cost driver know the significance of cost drivers in cost accounting. Therefore, the cost driver for your business was products returned by customers. Use cost drivers to allocate variable and indirect costs to production activities or output. An activity cost driver, also known as a causal factor, causes the cost of an activity to increase or decrease. External costs are costs that are not included in what the business bases its price on. The basic process of abc, based upon five steps, was applied and demonstrated the difficulties in applying cost data collection, identifying activity and cost drivers, as well as collecting driver. Consequently, for internal control, financial accounting, or other issues, relevant cost drivers that have direct.
A cost driver is the direct cause of a cost, and its effect is on the total cost incurred. The ability to drive or manage costs down or contain cost increases is an important strategic consideration where cost leadership is the key basis of the firms competitive advantage over rival suppliers. A tool for analyzing the value chain of the processes within an organization that creates profits against the overall costs of the manufacturing or production of products or services. Use cost drivers to allocate variable and indirect costs to production activities.
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