Job-Costing and process-Costing Systems
Management accountants use two basic types of costing systems to assign costs to products or services.
1. Job-costing system. In a job-costing systems, the cost object is a unit or multiple units of a distinct product or service called a job. Each job generally uses different amounts of resources. The product or service is often a single unit, such as a specialized machine made at Hitachi, a construction project managed by Bechtel Corporation, a repair job done at an Audi Service Center, or an advertising campaign produced by Saatchi & Saatchi. Each special machine made by Hitachi is unique and distinct from the other machines made at the plant. An advertising campaign for one client at Saatchi & Saatchi is unique and distinct from advertising campaigns for other clients. Job costing is also used by companies such as Ethan Allen to cost multiple identical units of distinct furniture products. Because the products and services are distinct, job-costing systems are used to accumulate costs separately for each product or service.