activity-based costing

Activity Based Budgeting

A way to budget that analyzes potential activities in which a company can engage. These activities are organized according to the company's goals, and the costs of each are organized to compile the budget. ABB contrasts with traditional budgeting, which usually simply increases the previous year's budget to account for inflation and the like; rather, ABB seeks out new opportunities and allocates resources in the budget based on them. Proponents say that ABB is a more accurate way to forecast budgeting.

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activity-based costing

a system of product costing which seeks to break down the divide between FIXED COSTS and VARIABLE COSTS by looking at the total cost to the business of making a product. All costs are related to cost drivers - the factors which influence the cost of a product.

Activity costing is suggested as an alternative to STANDARD COSTING, which analyses labour costs in detail and tends to share out overheads between products by reference to the direct labour hours involved in making different products. However, in automated factories, where labour is a relatively unimportant part of the total product cost, such detailed analysis of labour may not be justified and direct labour costs may be an inappropriate basis for analysing overheads. For such automated plants activity costing may be preferable, focusing as it does on the forces driving the costs of being in business.

Collins Dictionary of Business, 3rd ed. © 2002, 2005 C Pass, B Lowes, A Pendleton, L Chadwick, D O’Reilly and M Afferson