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The cost driver is a factor that creates or drives the cost of the activity. For example, the cost of the activity of bank tellers can be ascribed to each product by measuring how long each product's transactions (cost driver) take at the counter and then by measuring the number of each type of transaction.
The Chartered Institute of Management Accountants defines a cost driver as: [A] cost driver is any factor which causes a change in the cost of an activity. [citation needed] However, a different meaning is assigned to the term by the business writer Michael Porter: "cost drivers are the structural determinants of the cost of an activity ...
Activity-based costing establishes relationships between overhead costs and activities so that costs can be more precisely allocated to products, services, or customer segments. Activity-based management focuses on managing activities to reduce costs and improve customer value. Kaplan and Cooper [1] divide ABM into operational and strategic:
This is related to an activity rate which is a similar calculation used in activity-based costing. A pre-determined overhead rate is normally the term when using a single, plant-wide base to calculate and apply overhead. Overhead is then applied by multiplying the pre-determined overhead rate by the actual driver units. Any difference between ...
Activity-based costing also de-emphasizes direct labor as a cost driver and concentrates instead on activities that drive costs, as the provision of a service or the production of a product component. Other approach is the German Grenzplankostenrechnung (GPK) costing methodology.
Flexible use of activity-based drivers (only where needed) based on specific, and restrictive rules; Value chain integration [ 11 ] of management accounting into operational systems; Use of fundamental operations transactions as the primary source for financial and quantitative data (rather than the general ledger);
Cost driver analysis; Activity-based costing (ABC), which assigns a cost of each activity undertaken in the production and delivery of each product and service according to the actual consumption by each activity including a share of overheads.
While (ABC) Activity-based costing may be able to pinpoint the cost of each activity and resources into the ultimate product, the process could be tedious, costly and subject to errors. As it is a tool for a more accurate way of allocating fixed costs into a product, these fixed costs do not vary according to each month's production volume.