Is depreciation expense a fixed cost or a variable cost?
Let’s revisit the terms Fixed cost and Variable cost and then we will discuss where depreciation cost/expense really fits. Fixed costs are such costs that do not change with the change in activity level (e.g. units produced) with in the relevant range. Where relevant range can be defined in terms of time or activity level. […]
Is ‘Cost of goods sold’ a Product cost or a Period cost?
Before we discuss under what heading should we classify cost of goods sold, let’s first of all clear out our minds for the terms inventoriable costs and period costs with a quick review. You can the answer on difference between period costs and product costs in good detail here. Inventoriable costs (Product cost) or Product […]
What is the difference between Product cost and Period cost?
Product costs or Inventoriable costs are all such costs that form part of the inventory.These are basically such costs that relates directly to the products and are incurred to produce such products and also include the costs that are incurred to bring these products into saleable condition (or simply present location and condition). Examples are […]
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 the difference between revenue, income, profit, gain and return?
Every student who starts accounting and get an idea of these terms, the instinct of differentiating kicks in and he/she starts looking for the differences among these terms. Though there are sometimes minor and sometimes major differences among these terms but these days, with an exception of few, these terms are used interchangeably. For example, […]
What is the difference between Cost and Expense?
Most of the time the difference between the terms Cost and Expense is ignored and are used interchangeably. However, the difference is significant from accounting perspective and being an accountant it is good if we keep these two terms separate to cause lesser confusion and clearer communication of financial information. Cost can be defined as […]
What is meant by Apportionment of overheads?
Most of the time overheads are not caused by a single product or a cost center and are jointly incurred on one or more product or by one or more departments. Therefore, we cannot charge such overheads specifically to each department or simply they cannot be allocated. Even though we cannot charge some kinds overheads […]
