Silver Company uses one raw material, silver ore, for all its products. It spends considerable time getting the silver from the ore before it starts the actual processing of the finished products, rings, lockets, etc. Traditionally, the company made one product at a time and charged the product with all costs of production, from ore to final inspection. However, in recent months, the cost accounting reports have been somewhat disturbing to management. It seems that some of the finished products are costing more than they should, even to the point of approaching their retail value. It has been noted by the accounting manager that this problem began when the company started buying ore from different parts of the world, some of which require difficult extraction methods.
Required:
Can you explain how the company might change its accounting system to better reflect the reporting problems? Are there other problems with the purchasing area?
Answer:
It appears that the company needs to start assigning all extraction costs to a joint-cost category. It is unfair that the finished products receive a high cost simply because a certain batch of ore was very expensive to run through the extraction process when the next finished products were produced from silver that was easy to extract.
If all extraction costs are considered joint, then each finished product would share in the average cost of extraction, rather than being charged with the cost of a specific batch. This should result in costs that are more reflective of the product’s actual cost.
Additional problems may be with the purchasing department. The accounting department may help highlight the problem but does not pinpoint the actual problem. Maybe they should buy refined silver or else hire experts in the minerals area as part of the purchasing team.
