Calculating ABC Activity Costs

Use the ABC Calculate Cost program to calculate activity costs for your company. The system calculates costs on a year-to-date and 12-month rolling basis for the current and previous year. You can compare these costs for several periods in the inquiries and reports.

The calculation program gathers expenses from the general ledger expense accounts assigned to the ABC G/L pools. The system uses this data to calculate the average per occurrence cost for each activity listed on the ABC Code Maintenance screen. The calculated cost for each activity is displayed in the Calc Cost column. The system updates the calculated costs each time you run the ABC Calculate Cost program.

We recommend that you run the program at least monthly after all expenses post to the general ledger, but you can run it any time.

To calculate ABC activity costs:

From the Events > Activity Based Costing menu, select Calculate Activity Costs to display the ABC Calculate Cost screen.
In the As of Date field, enter the date at which the system begins to calculate ABC costs. You can enter a calendar date or a variable date in this field. The system populates this field with today's date.

The system calculates the costs on a year-to-date and 12-month rolling basis for the current and previous year, based on the date entered in this field.

Use the Begin hot key to run the program now or the Schedule hot key to schedule the program to run at regular intervals. The system notifies you via the Message System when the calculation is complete.