Question

Gallatin Carpet Cleaning is a small, family-owned business operating out of Bozeman, Montana. For its services, the company has always charged a flat fee per hundred square feet of carpet cleaned. The current fee is $22.70 per hundred square feet. However, there is some question about whether the company is actually making any money on jobs for some customers—particularly those located on remote ranches that require considerable travel time. The owner’s daughter, home for the summer from college, has suggested investigating this question using activity-based costing. After some discussion, she designed a simple system consisting of four activity cost pools. The activity cost pools and their activity measures appear below:

Activity Cost Pool	Activity Measure	Activity for the Year
Cleaning carpets	Square feet cleaned (00s)	8,000	hundred square feet
Travel to jobs	Miles driven	371,000	miles
Job support	Number of jobs	1,800	jobs
Other (organization-sustaining costs and idle capacity costs)	None	Not applicable

The total cost of operating the company for the year is $358,000 which includes the following costs:

Wages	$	137,000
Cleaning supplies		33,000
Cleaning equipment depreciation		16,000
Vehicle expenses		35,000
Office expenses		59,000
President’s compensation		78,000
Total cost	$	358,000

Resource consumption is distributed across the activities as follows:

Distribution of Resource Consumption Across Activities
	Cleaning Carpets		Travel to Jobs		Job Support		Other		Total
Wages	72	%	15	%	0	%	13	%	100	%
Cleaning supplies	100	%	0	%	0	%	0	%	100	%
Cleaning equipment depreciation	67	%	0	%	0	%	33	%	100	%
Vehicle expenses	0	%	85	%	0	%	15	%	100	%
Office expenses	0	%	0	%	57	%	43	%	100	%
President’s compensation	0	%	0	%	28	%	72	%	100	%

Job support consists of receiving calls from potential customers at the home office, scheduling jobs, billing, resolving issues, and so on.

Required:

1. Prepare the first-stage allocation of costs to the activity cost pools.

2. Compute the activity rates for the activity cost pools.

3. The company recently completed a 600 square foot carpet-cleaning job at the Flying N Ranch—a 53-mile round-trip journey from the company’s offices in Bozeman. Compute the cost of this job using the activity-based costing system.

4. The revenue from the Flying N Ranch was $136.20 (600 square feet @ $22.70 per hundred square feet). Calculate the customer margin earned on this job.

Answer 1

Answer 1
The first-stage allocation of costs to the activity cost pools.
	Cleaning Carpet	Travel to Jobs	Job Support	Other
Wages	$98,640	$20,550	$0	$17,810
Cleaning supplies	$33,000	$0	$0	$0
Cleaning equipment depreciation	$10,720	$0	$0	$5,280
Vehcile expenses	$0	$29,750	$0	$5,250
Office expenses	$0	$0	$33,630	$25,370
President's compensation	$0	$0	$21,840	$56,160
Total Cost	$142,360	$50,300	$55,470	$109,870
Answer 2
Calculation of Activity rates
Activity cost pool	Total cost	Activity for the year			Activity rate
Cleaning carpets	$142,360	8000	hundred square feet		$17.80	per hundred square feet
Travel to jobs	$50,300	371000	miles		$0.14	per mile
Job support	$55,470	1800	jobs		$30.82	per job
Answer 3
Computation of the cost of this job using the activity-based costing system.
Cleaning carpets [6 * $17.80]	$106.77
Travel to jobs [53 * $0.14]	$7.19
Job support [1 * $30.82]	$30.82
Cost of the Job	$144.77
Answer 4
Calculation the customer margin earned on this job.
Revenue from Flying N Ranch	$136.20
Less : Cost of the job	$144.77
Customer Margin	-$8.57