Methods of Costing in Management Accounting

Management accounting

METHODS OF COSTING
Costing method is used by companies to determine the cost of the products or services delivered
to customers. There are many method of allocation of the cost of the product, each method of
costing provide the different perspective (Plank, 2018).
Job costing method
In the job costing system, the cost is allocated on the basis of each job by considering an
individual product or the group project. The job costing system is useful when the company
produced different products having unique requirements (Weygandt, Kimmel, and Kieso, 2015).
Since the products are significantly different from each other, the job costing method build the
job cost record for the individual item, special order or particular job. In this method, the direct
material and direct labour cost assigned to the product on the basis of the actual use and then the
indirect cost is assigned (Intriligator, 2017).
Major construction companies use the job costing system for the correct allocation of the cost.
Since all the construction is not the same, therefore the job costing method leads to the accurate
and realistic allocation of the cost. With this regards, Venture Construction Company based on
the United States engaged in the construction-related activity uses the job costing system for the
allocation of the cost (Venture Construction Company, 2018). By this method, the company can
determine all the construction cost related to its each construction project definitely.
Process costing method
Process costing refers to the method of allocation of the direct and indirect cost of the
manufacturing process. In this method, the cost is allocated to a product, generally in a large

batch size (Ax, and Greve, 2017). The process costing is useful for those companies who
produce a huge quantity of product which is similar. In other words, it can be said that process
costing is the part of the cost accounting technique in which the cost incurred during the
production process is a levy on the process and averaged over the total units manufactured in the
company (Dekker, 2016).
Chevron Corporation, which is an American multinational energy corporation, uses the process
costing for the allocation of the cost incurred by the company. The company is one of the largest
oil corporates in the world (Chevron, 2018). The process costing system is useful for the
company as they produced a similar and identical product in the large quantity and through the
process costing the company track the position of the amount incurred on the product channel
and the distribution channel. Further, the managerial control and supervision can be easily
established because the activity of the operation in the standard costing is consistent. The
company can within a short period of time easily identify the process cost and can analyse and
evaluate the cost difference for the specified period. Moreover, on the basis of the process
costing, allocation of the expenses is very easy which leads to the accurate and reliable cost of
the product.
Activity based costing
Further, in the activity based costing, the allocation is based on the activities consumed by the
product, the product which consumes more resources results in the greater allocation of the
overhead cost, and the product which uses fewer resources results in lower cost (Haroun, 2015).
Allocation of the overhead by applying the activity based costing gives more reliable and
accurate data.