Question

Activity-Based Customer Costing

Deeds Company sells custom-made machine parts to industrial equipment manufacturers by bidding cost plus 40 percent, where cost is defined as manufacturing cost plus order processing cost. There are two types of customers: those who place small, frequent orders and those who place larger, less frequent orders. Cost and sales information by customer category is provided below.

	Frequently Ordering Customers				Less Frequently Ordering Customers
Sales orders		37,000				3,700
Order size		15				150
Average unit manufacturing cost		$45				$45
Order-processing activity costs:
Processing sales orders						$2,878,500

Order-filling capacity is purchased in steps (order-processing clerks) of 1,000, each step costing $45,000; variable order-filling activity costs are $35 per order. The activity capacity is 45,000 orders; thus, the total order-filling cost is $3,449,500 [(45 steps × $45,000) + ($35 × 40,700)]. Current practice allocates ordering cost in proportion to the units purchased.

Deeds recently lost a bid for 100 units. (The per-unit bid price was $2 per unit more than the winning bid.) The manager of Deeds was worried that this was a recurring trend for the larger orders. (Other large orders had been lost with similar margins of loss.) No such problem was taking place for the smaller orders; the company rarely lost bids on smaller orders.

Required:

1. Calculate the unit bid price offered to Deeds’s customers assuming that order-filling cost is allocated to each customer category in proportion to units sold. Note: Do not round interim calculations. Round your final answer to the nearest cent.
$

2. Assume that a newly implemented ABC system concludes that the number of orders placed is the best cost driver for the order-filling activity. Assign order-filling costs using this driver to each customer type and then calculate the new unit bid price for each customer type. Note: Do not round interim calculations. Round the final order cost allocation to the nearest whole dollar. Round final bid prices to the nearest cent.

	Order Cost Allocation round to whole dollar	Bid Price round to two decimals
Frequently ordering	$	$
Less frequently ordering	$	$

Using this new price, would Deeds have won the bid for the units recently lost?

Answer 1

.Solution-

1.

Order-filling cost is allocated to each customer category in proportion to units sold

Total units sold=

(37,000*15)+(3,700*150)=

1,110,000

i.e.,555,000+ 555,000each category

So,order cost allocation for either customer category=

555,000/1,110,000*3,449,500=

1,724,750

So,Bid price for either category=

(Mfg.Order Processing cost)*(1=Mark-up%)

(45+(1,724,750/555,000))*1.40=

67.35

2.

No. of orders placed is the best cost driver for the order-filling activity

Order cost allocation:

Frequently ordering customers

37,000/40,700* 3,449,500=

3,135,909

Less Frequently ordering customer:

3,700/40,700* 3,449,500=

313,591

Now calculating the Bid-price for each category as in 1 above,

For Frequently ordering customers

(45+(3135909/555,000))*1.40=

70.91

for Less Frequently ordering customer:

(45+(313591/555,000))*1.40=

63.79

Yes. As per the ABC costing, Deed could have won the bid, as it is almost $ 3.5 (67.35-63.79) less than the original bid in 1.