From clean toilets to working computers, your company incurs many costs that it cannot assign to one particular "cost object" -- a product, project, department or service. You must nonetheless cover ...

Every business leader should probably have at least a rudimentary understanding of accounting. It’s not about becoming an accountant; it’s just about knowing enough not to get fooled or fool yourself.

The most common mistake is allocating overhead as a percentage of job cost. This practice is so universal that we rarely meet a contractor who veers from it. For example, assume a painting contractor ...

Overhead allocation is a source of great disagreement in our industry. Should the allocation be based on job price? On job cost? Per project? Or per field man-hour. We understand the pros and cons of ...

Small businesses that manufacture products are required to account for all of the costs of production. One of these costs, overhead, is the cost of production that cannot be individually traced to ...

Implementation of full cost accounting in FY 2004 created problems for NASA’s research Centers when a complex allocation of overhead costs disproportionately inflated their costs compared to the ...