A2. Main Features of the Current Costing and Billing Systems Used by JBI
The cost structure of the JBI was previously based on traditional costing system with the help of which, the cost of customer services were allocated to every customer on the basis of the share of the company’s total revenue. As observed currently, the total cost of customer service of JBI accounts for about 10% of the total revenue of the company. However, this costing structure of the company stated that customers were not equally benefited, as some were more profitable in comparison to others. Thus, as a result of this inaccuracy in the profit figures, the rate of discounts to be offered to them also became inaccurate, which further affected the customers to obtain their deserved benefit from company. In order to overcome this situation, JBI has adopted a new cost structure in terms of ABC, which deduces a more accurate figure of profitability than the previous cost structure (Accounting Tips, 2014). In order to adopt this new system of costing, JBI has categorized the cost of customer services into various aspects such as, product delivery, product handling, taking orders and customer’s visits, which the company has made applicable to only twenty percent of its customers. However, the main features of the ABC structure is that it is a major replacement of the labor based costing system and is based on the assumption that the activities lack any relation with the volume of production. Rather than allocating the costs to the cost centers like marketing, manufacturing and financial departments, the ABC method allocates both direct and indirect costs to various activities like, attending a customer complaint, processing an order or setting up of machines (Hearst Newspapers, LLC, 2014). Moreover, the costing system helps the management of any company to understand the way of profit making as well as identify the areas of investments undertaken. It also helps the company to understand the potential areas for cost reduction. However, the ABC system involves two stages for the assignment of cost. The first stage involves the establishment of the activity cost pools and the second stage involves the selection of specific cost drivers for every activity cost pool. This was followed by assigning the costs in the cost pools to the product line of company, proportionate to the amount of utilization of the related cost driver by the product lines. Thus, the ABC structure proved to be effective for JBI to solve cost related problems as well as be beneficial for its customers (GRIN Verlag Gmbh, 2013).