What is Standard Cost? Its an Estimate

Basic standards provide the basis for comparing actual costs over time with a constant standard. Public utilities such as transport organizations, electricity supply companies, and waterworks can also apply standard costing techniques to control costs and increase efficiency. The variances arising from expected standards represent the degree of efficiency in usage of the factors of production, variation in prices paid for materials and services and difference in the volume of production. Peter J Smith is a production manager in Company A, which manufactures 3D printers. To ascertain production costs at the beginning of an accounting period, he considered the company’s production process, past trends, and anticipated market conditions in the future.

Standard costs are determined for different elements of costs, including the standard cost of direct materials, direct labor, and various overheads. Variance analysis allows managers to see whether costs https://www.bookstime.com/ are different than planned. Once a difference between expected and actual costs is identified, variance analysis should delve into why the costs differ and what the magnitude of the difference means.

Limitations of Standard Costing

Codes and symbols are assigned to different accounts to make the collection and analysis of costs more quick and convenient. This section highlights the most important advantages of standard cost. Also, standard cost may be expressed in terms of money or other exact quantities. Standard costs also assist the management team when making decisions about long-term pricing.

In turn, management can take action to correct the problems, seek higher selling prices, etc. If actual cost is higher than the standard cost, the variance is unfavorable. Manufacturing companies determine the standard cost of each unit of product by establishing the standard cost of direct materials, direct labor, and manufacturing overhead necessary to produce that unit.

Basic or Bogey Standards

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Standard Costing helps to apply the principle of “Management by exception”. That is, the management need not worry over those activities which proceed in tandem plans. It is only on the issues of exceptions that they have to concentrate. We follow strict ethical journalism practices, which includes presenting unbiased information and citing reliable, attributed resources. Ideal standards are effective only when the individuals are aware and are rewarded for achieving a certain percentage (e.g., 90%) of the standard.

Problems in Setting Standard Costs

This can be done with accuracy with standard cost than the actual costs. Standard costs removes the reflection of abnormal price fluctuations in production planning. A production process is complex, and an accurate prediction of the expected cost is impossible.

• These standards can then be used in establishing standard costs that can be used in creating an assortment of different types of budgets.
• Direct materials may have a variance in price of materials or quantity of materials used.
• Rather, it would charge these excess costs to variance accounts after comparing actual costs to standard costs.
• This method tended to slightly distort the resulting unit cost, but in mass-production industries that made one product line, and where the fixed costs were relatively low, the distortion was very minor.
• For example, the coffee company mentioned in the opening vignette may expect to pay $0.50 per ounce for coffee grounds.
• Inaccurate and unreliable standards cause misleading results and thus may not enjoy the confidence of the users of this system.

Price of material in the past, current prices and fluctuating trends are the base for determining standard of price. It includes (1) Determination of standard quantity of material required, and (2) Determination of standard price per unit of material. The first step is to set standards which are to be achieved, the process of standard setting is explained below. These standards are used only when they are likely to remain constant or unaltered over a long period. According to this standard, a base year is chosen for comparison purposes in the same way as statisticians use price in- dices.

More reasonable and easier
inventory measurements A standard cost system provides
easier inventory valuation than an actual cost system. Under an
actual cost system, unit costs for batches of identical products
may differ widely. For example, this variation can occur because of
a machine malfunction during the production of a given batch that
increases the labor and overhead charged to that batch.

Cost accountants, therefore, concentrated on how efficiently managers used labor since it was their most important variable resource. Now, however, workers who come to work on Monday morning almost always work 40 hours or more; their cost is fixed rather than variable. However, today, many managers are still evaluated on their labor efficiencies, and many downsizing, rightsizing, and other labor reduction campaigns are based on them. The preceding list shows that there are many situations where standard costing is not useful, and may even result in incorrect management actions. Nonetheless, as long as you are aware of these issues, it is usually possible to profitably adapt standard costing into some aspects of a company’s operations.