The materiality of the cost in question. The smaller the amount of a cost-that is, the more immaterial the cost is-the less likely that it is economically feasible to trace that cost to a particular cost object. Consider a mail-order catalog company such as lands’ End. It would be economically feasible to trace the courier charge for delivering a package to an individual customer as direct cost. In contrast, the cost of the invoice paper include in the package would be classified as an indirect cost. Why? Although the cost of the paper can be traced to each customer, it is not cost-effective to do so. The benefits of knowing that, say, exactly 0.5 worth of paper is included in each package do not exceed the data processing and administrative costs of tracing the cost to each package. The time of the sales administrator, who earns a salary of $45,000 a year, is better spent organizing customer information to assist in focused marketing efforts than on tracking the cost of paper