PROFIT POINT ANALYSIS
This study adopts activity-based accounting (ABC) tool because activity-based costing
has been advocated as a means of overcoming the systematic distortions of traditional
cost accounting and of bringing relevance back to managerial accounting. It is necessary
to review activity-based costing because the proposed method is based on activity-based
costing
ACTIVITY-BASED COSTING
Traditional cost accounting has been criticized for cost distortion and the lack of
relevance during the last 20 years (Johnson and Kaplan 1987). A traditional system
reports where and by whom money is spent on, but fails to report the cost of activities and
processes (Miller 1996). Many organizations, including petroleum and semiconductor
companies in the manufacturing industry, have adopted the new costing method, activitybased
costing (ABC).
There are two purposes of activity-based costing. The first is to prevent cost
distortion. Cost distortion occurs because traditional costing combines all indirect costs
into a single cost pool. This pool is allocated on the basis of some resource common to all
of the company’s products, typically direct labor. Cost distortion is prevented in ABC by
adopting multiple cost pools (activities) and cost drivers. The second purpose is to
minimize waste or non-value-adding activities by providing a process view. This
objective can be achieved by activity analysis and (or) the function of monitoring
activities.