2. Classifying product costing systems by their level of sophistication
Product costing system design choices can be viewed as varying along four dimensions: the number of
cost pools, the number of different types of cost drivers used in the second stage of the two-stage overhead
assignment process, the types of second stage drivers used and the extent to which direct assignments
or resource drivers are used in the first stage of the allocation process. Costing systems are classified
according to their level of sophistication based on where they fit on a continuum representing the four
dimensions for assigning indirect costs.1 Fig. 1 presents the model we use to classify product costing
systems by their level of sophistication.2
The most simplistic system is a direct costing system and this is located on the extreme left of the
continuum shown in Fig. 1. Moving along the continuum represents different sophistication levels in
terms of assigning indirect costs to cost objects. Towards the extreme left are the simplistic systems (e.g.
single plant-wide cost pools). Higher levels of sophistication are assumed to be associated with increasing
the number of cost pools based on the premise that creating a greater number of cost pools enables the
costing system to better capture the variability in cost pool resource consumption by products/services.
The second dimension influencing the level of sophistication relates to the number of different types of