However, some indirect costs—such as management and office staff salaries—are difficult to assign to a product. The way in which companies will structure the schedule by which machines are set up is an example of how batch-level activity accounting can influence the practices of a manufacturer. This type of practice is likely to have been developed out of an awareness of the specific costs related to producing a batch of each product. Batch-level activities are one of the five broad levels of activity that activity-based costing account for.

On the right hand side of the account Staubus recorded the value of the output of the activity. If however the output is sold to a customer, the output is measured at the net realizable value (selling price minus selling costs). Staubus activity accounting culminates in a comparison of outputs, at standard cost or net realizable value, and inputs (Staubus, 1971). The first step in activity-based costing involves identifying activities and classifying them according to the cost hierarchy.

Batch-Level Activities: Meaning, History, Examples

1. The levels are (a) unit level, (b) batch level, (c) product level, and (d) facility level.
2. Instead of accumulating all costs in one company-wide pool, it pools costs by activity.
3. Let’s consider a fictional example of a toy manufacturing company that produces two types of action figures, Model A and Model B. The company uses a batch production process, where it produces each type of action figure in separate batches.

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What Does Activity-Based Costing Seek to Identify?

This is unlike batch-level activities that happen every time a batch of products are produced. Unit-level activities are those that support making each individual unit, while batch-level include a group of units. Let’s consider a fictional example of a toy manufacturing company that produces two types of action figures, Model A and Model B. The company uses a batch production batch-level activity process, where it produces each type of action figure in separate batches. The formula for activity-based costing is the cost pool total divided by the cost driver, which yields the cost driver rate. The cost driver rate is used in activity-based costing to calculate the amount of overhead and indirect costs related to a particular activity. Unit level activities are activities that are performed on each unit of product.

Example of Batch-Level Activities

Product-level activities are related to specific products; product-level activities must be carried out regardless of how many units of product are made and sold. (For example, designing a product is a product-level activity.) Customer-level activities relate to specific customers. An example of a customer-level activity is general technical product support. The final level of activity, organization-sustaining activity, refers to activities that must be completed regardless of the products being produced, how many batches are run, or how many units are made.

History of Batch-Level Activities

Examples of cost drivers include machine setups, maintenance requests, consumed power, purchase orders, quality inspections, or production orders. The ABC system of cost accounting is based on activities, which are any events, units of work, or tasks with a specific goal—such as setting up machines for production, designing products, distributing finished goods, or operating machines. In the 1930s, the Comptroller of the Tennessee Valley Authority, Eric Kohler developped the concept of Activity Accounting. The Tennessee Valley Authority was engaged in flood control, navigation, hydro-electric power generation, etc. Kohler could not use a traditional managerial accounting system for these kind of operations.

Batch-level activities are production tasks or processes that occur each time a batch or group of similar products is produced, regardless of the number of units within the batch. These activities are indirectly related to individual product units, and their costs are considered indirect costs. Batch-level activities are a key component of activity-based costing (ABC) systems, which aim to more accurately allocate indirect costs to products or services. Activity-based costing (ABC) is a costing method that assigns overhead and indirect costs to related products and services. This cost accounting method recognizes the relationship between costs, overhead activities, and manufactured products, assigning indirect costs to products less arbitrarily than traditional costing methods.