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In Cost Accounting are there two ABC methods in accounting?

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Question added by Rehan Qureshi , Financial Consultant , Self Employeed
Date Posted: 2014/01/10
Rehan Qureshi
by Rehan Qureshi , Financial Consultant , Self Employeed

Some accountants use ABC to mean Activity Based Costing. Under this ABC a manufacturer will use many cost drivers to assign overhead costs to products. The objective of Activity Based Costing is to assign the overhead costs based on their root causes rather than merely spreading the costs on the basis of direct labor hours or production machine hours. A second use of ABC involves categorizing inventory items into "A" items, "B" items, and "C" items. The "A" items are a relatively small number of items which account for the majority of the inventory's value. For example, the "A" items might be20% of the items in inventory which account for70% of the inventory value. At the other extreme the "C" items might be60% of the items in inventory but account for only10% of the inventory value. The "B" items might be20% of the items accounting for20% of the inventory value. Under this system, the "A" items will receive the most attention since they account for70% of the value. This ABC is sometimes referred to as Pareto analysis or Pareto's rule and it can be applied to more than inventory. For example,20% of a company's customers might account for70% of the company's sales.

Mohammed Hussain Shah
by Mohammed Hussain Shah , Finance Manager , Al-Naba Contracting Co. Ltd

None of these is an accounting method per se. ABC is a costing technique used to arrive at costs of products and services in a fairly reasonable manner. This technique has weeded out the traditional way of allocating costs on some arbitary basis. ABC in relation to inventory is a way or method of classifying the inventory items for inventory managment puposes. 

Hope I have understood the question. 

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