What is Idle time and its accounting treatment?
Idle time is the simply the time for which labour has been paid for but no work has been done. Whereas inefficiency arises when labour is actually engaged on production but output is not as expected or simply not 100%. Idle time may arise out of normal or abnormal situations and it is the situation […]
What is Cost classification and in how many ways can we classify cost?
Cost classification is a simple process in which we group or categorize costs on the basis of common characteristics. Grouping costs on the basis of their nature, form, source or any other attribution makes it really easy to understand their effects and ultimately to take decisions about costs and beyond any shadow of doubt classifying […]
What is Normal costing?
Right at the very start of cost accounting we understand that decision making is one of the crucial and an ongoing process in every organization. Managers have to decide about many things all the time and for this they need relevant and reliable information or to be specific complete information. This is where cost accounting […]
Can direct costs be fixed and indirect costs be variable costs?
Classifying costs as direct or indirect cost is one way of cost classification whereas classifying costs on the basis of their behaviour as fixed or variable costs is just another way of classification of costs. Both classifications are separate and must not be confused together. The cost that can be traced back to a product […]
What is Opportunity cost and why is it a Relevant cost as well?
Opportunity costs are defined to be the economic value of the benefit sacrificed under one alternative to avail the benefit under another alternative course of action. For example, company have the option of manufacturing either alpha or beta. As company does not have enough resources to manufacture both of them so it will have to […]
What is the difference between Notional cost and Opportunity cost?
Notional costs and Opportunity costs are two important concepts in cost and management accounting as they have far reaching effects on decisions making process. But both are distinct and understanding the features of each type of cost is vital as it has important implications from decision making perspective. All opportunity costs included in the cost […]
What is Notional cost?
Notional means imaginary, speculative or conceptual i.e. something that has no actual existence and is mere imagination. Same way a notional cost is an imaginary cost which is sometimes included in the cost units and cost centers to make costing estimates more realistic or simply more challenging especially when the performance of cost unit and […]
What is meant by Shadow prices?
Shadow price or dual price is a quantitative technique to analyze the improvement in the contribution or costs by having one additional unit of a resource which is causing a bottleneck. This analysis basically helps management in deciding whether a struggle to uplift the constraint is worthwhile or not. Before we look at the definition […]
