Understanding Traditional Costing
Many manufacturing companies use the traditional costing system to assign manufacturing overhead to units produced. Users of the traditional costing method make the assumption that the volume metric is the underlying driver of manufacturing overhead cost. Under traditional costing, accountants assign manufacturing costs only to products. Traditional accounting fails to allocate non manufacturing costs that also are associated with the production of an item, such as administrative expenses. Companies commonly use traditional accounting in external financial reports because it provides a value for the cost of goods sold.