Activity Based Costing
After 6 months in operation the department’s manager Clara Bird decided that the
key activities need to be analysed to identify opportunities for improving service
delivery. Clara believes a ‘cost sampling’ or snapshot’ approach is required to identify
key activities and their costs. This technique will help the department to develop
estimates of how much time is devoted to different activities and then by using an
average hourly rate for all staff Clara will be able to estimate the total annual cost of
an activity. The decision to use an average hourly rate for all staff will save time with
the first ‘cost sampling’.