Complete Costing: A Classroom Activity to Help Students Understand How Managerial Accounting Topics Fit Together*

Abstract

This classroom activity helps students tie together the concepts of absorption costing for inventory, selling and administrative (SA) cost calculations, and sales price decisions. It shows students how all costs fit together and are used to make business and pricing decisions, synthesizing discrete sections of most managerial or cost accounting books into a complete process. The activity is designed to be run in one 75-minute class session using an Excel template that allows students to focus on business decisions and less on the mechanics of completing calculations. The seven segments of the activity have students calculate target cost, allocate items of overhead into production and service departments, calculate absorption product cost, allocate SA to the production departments, determine the full cost, evaluate product viability, and calculate target price. At the end of the activity, students better understand how all these cost items fit together in a manufacturing setting.

Citation

Porter, J. and Stephenson, T. (2023), "Complete Costing: A Classroom Activity to Help Students Understand How Managerial Accounting Topics Fit Together*", Calderon, T.G. (Ed.) Advances in Accounting Education: Teaching and Curriculum Innovations (Advances in Accounting Education, Vol. 27), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 173-189. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1085-462220230000027009