T2F is a university café owned an operated by a student. While it has plans for expansion it currently offers two products: (a) tea & coffee and (b) shakes. It employs 2 people: Mr. A, who looks after tea & coffee and Mr. B who prepares and serves shakes & desserts.
Its costs for the first quarter are as follows:
Total tea and coffee sales and shakes sales were $50,000 & $60,000 respectively. Number of customers who ordered tea or coffee were 10,000 while those ordering shakes were 8,000.
The owner is interested in finding out which product performed better.
Solution:
Salaries of Mr. A & B and direct materials consumed are direct costs which do not need any allocation. They are traced directly to the products. The rest of the costs are indirect costs and need some basis for allocation.
Cost objects in this situation are the products: hot beverages (i.e. tea & coffee) & shakes. Cost pools include rent, electricity, music, internet and wi-fi subscription and magazines.
Appropriate cost drivers for the indirect costs are as follows:
Since number of customers is a good cost driver for almost all the costs, the costs can be accumulated together to form one cost pool called manufacturing overheads. This would simply the cost allocation.
Total manufacturing overheads for the first quarter are $19,700. Total number of customers who ordered either product are 18,000. This gives us a cost allocation base of $1.1 per customer ($19,700/18,000).
A detailed cost assignment is as follows:
Manufacturing overheads allocated to Tea & Cofee = $1.1×10,000
Manufacturing overheads allocated to Shakes = $1.1×8,000
