Once the support departments have been ranked, the top ranking department is allocated to lower ranking support departments and the producing departments. It is then closed out (has a total cost remaining of zero) and remaining support departments cannot allocate cost back to it. Then, the costs of support department next in sequence are similarly allocated, and so on. In the sequential method, once a support department’s costs are allocated, it never receives a subsequent allocation from another support department. In other words, costs of a support department are never allocated to support departments above it in the sequence Also note that the costs allocated from a support department are its direct cost plus any cost it receives in allocations from other support departments. The direct costs of a department are those that are directly traceable to the department.