Firms uncertain about whether to invest large sums on data management consultants as an alternative to their spreadsheet software might first consider prototyping the system. A prototyping firm can assess the extent to which existing resources and data collection procedures will need to be...

Reports the findings of a survey on management accounting practices in Singapore. Taking the form of a longitudinal study, finds in general that improvements have been made. However, Singapore’s own companies continue to lag behind multinational companies.

Develops a continuum of product costing systems (PCSs) and demonstrates its application to making managerial decisions. Explains the relevance of this structure to managerial issues including inventory control, pricing, special decisions and product design. Synthesizes various PCSs into a...

Many banks and financial institutions have resisted the opportunity to model customer profiles because of the cost of developing and maintaining customer profitability information based on the capture and storage of individual transactions. This paper describes the development of such a model to...

The objective of a cost management system is to provide accurate and useful information to help companies in utilizing their valuable resources for producing quality goods and services in a competitive environment. Activity‐based costing (ABC) has been found more appropriate for capital...

In present day manufacturing organizations, performance measurements play an important role in providing strategic directions and developing corresponding operational policies and methods. One such method is the activity‐based costing (ABC) method which calculates the cost of activities and...

Reports the findings of a pilot survey into how product costs are calculated and how they are used in decision making in manufacturing industry in the UK. The survey examines how many accounting systems firms use, blanket overhead rates in product costing; the bases used to calculate overhead...

Since its introduction in the 1980s, benchmarking has become increasingly popular for measuring the operational performance of companies. Benchmarking generally means to analytically compare a company with leading practices identified in the industry. The main obstacle in performing benchmarking...

Regardless of the approach taken to allocating common costs, is cost allocation really necessary? Argues that such an exercise may not make any difference to the final outcome ‐ the company’s final profit or loss figure. Takes as an example the University of Clemson, USA’s system of...

Activity‐based costing (ABC) has received considerable attention in recent years. In fact, some have portrayed it as a cure‐all for all kinds of problems. Presents a father‐son debate on this issue (the father as the consultant and the son as the entrepreneur). Argues that ABC may not...