Question

Create a company for which a process costing system would be ideal. With regard to process costing, discuss some of the accounting issues that you will need to address --again, with regard to process costing. How would you determine the unit cost of your product -- what are the components of your unit cost? What are some examples of your overhead costs? How would you calculate your predetermined overhead rate?

Answer 1

PROCESS COSTING:

A process costing system is used by companies that produce similar or identical units of product in batches employing a consistent process.

EXAMPLE:

ABC International produces purple widgets, which require processing through multiple production departments. The first department in the process is the casting department, where the widgets are initially created. During the month of March, the casting department incurs $50,000 of direct material costs and $120,000 of conversion costs (comprised of direct labor and factory overhead). The department processes 10,000 widgets during March, so this means that the per unit cost of the widgets passing through the casting department during that time period is $5.00 for direct materials and $12.00 for conversion costs. The widgets then move to the trimming department for further work, and these per-unit costs will be carried along with the widgets into that department, where additional costs will be added.

The typical manner in which costs flow in process costing is that direct material costs are added at the beginning of the process, while all other costs (both direct labor and overhead) are gradually added over the course of the production process. For example, in a food processing operation, the direct material (such as a cow) is added at the beginning of the operation, and then various rendering operations gradually convert the direct material into finished products (such as steaks).

Under process costing, overhead costs are allocated on the basis of production units and not based on each job.If there are no in‐process units at the beginning or end of the period, the per unit cost is calculated by dividing the total costs assigned to a function (department) by the total number of units that were started and completed during the period. The total costs include materials, labor, and overhead.

With the manufacturing overhead costs and the machine hour totals, you can calculate the predetermined overhead rate by dividing the overhead costs by the machine hours. For instance, if the manufacturer estimates $10,000 in overhead costs with 20,000 machine hours, the predetermined overhead rate is 50 cents per unit