Abstract
This paper describes a procedure that allows small
companies to smoothly switch from a traditional costing
system to an Activity Based Costing system at low risk
and with minimal investment. The paper focuses on any
type of small company (less than 100 employees) for
which the standard implementation of Activity Based
Costing is too expensive and complex. The
implementation guide leads a company step-by-step
through Cooper’s two-stage activity based cost system
model. The complete implementation procedure consists
of eight major steps. At first, decision-makers choose
among three methods, educated guess, systematic
appraisal, or actual data collection, for obtaining cost
information. At this stage, the decision-makers determine
the level of accuracy that is needed and the amount of
money to be assigned to this project. Next, the overhead
expenses such as administration, rent, utilities, and
transportation are compiled into product cost information
using newly developed matrices. Using these matrices,
cost related calculations are simplified and thus the
overhead costs are easily traced to the cost objects in the
final step. The easy-of-use of the proposed procedure is
illustrated using actual data from a small tool & die
manufacturing company.