Gallatin Carpet Cleaning is a small, family-owned business operating out of Bozeman, Montana. For its services, the company has always charged a flat fee per hundred square feet of carpet cleaned. The current fee is $22.45 per hundred square feet. However, there is some question about whether the company is actually making any money on jobs for some customers—particularly those located on remote ranches that require considerable travel time. The owner’s daughter, home for the summer from college, has suggested investigating this question using activity-based costing. After some discussion, she designed a simple system consisting of four activity cost pools. The activity cost pools and their activity measures appear below:
| Activity Cost Pool | Activity Measure | Activity for the Year | |
| Cleaning carpets | Square feet cleaned (00s) | 8,500 | hundred square feet |
| Travel to jobs | Miles driven | 233,000 | miles |
| Job support | Number of jobs | 2,000 | jobs |
| Other (organization-sustaining costs and idle capacity costs) | None | Not applicable | |
The total cost of operating the company for the year is $362,000 which includes the following costs:
| Wages | $ | 145,000 |
| Cleaning supplies | 26,000 | |
| Cleaning equipment depreciation | 17,000 | |
| Vehicle expenses | 32,000 | |
| Office expenses | 58,000 | |
| President’s compensation | 84,000 | |
| Total cost | $ | 362,000 |
Resource consumption is distributed across the activities as follows:
| Distribution of Resource Consumption Across Activities | ||||||||||
| Cleaning Carpets | Travel to Jobs | Job Support | Other | Total | ||||||
| Wages | 76 | % | 12 | % | 0 | % | 12 | % | 100 | % |
| Cleaning supplies | 100 | % | 0 | % | 0 | % | 0 | % | 100 | % |
| Cleaning equipment depreciation | 69 | % | 0 | % | 0 | % | 31 | % | 100 | % |
| Vehicle expenses | 0 | % | 77 | % | 0 | % | 23 | % | 100 | % |
| Office expenses | 0 | % | 0 | % | 60 | % | 40 | % | 100 | % |
| President’s compensation | 0 | % | 0 | % | 32 | % | 68 | % | 100 | % |
Job support consists of receiving calls from potential customers at the home office, scheduling jobs, billing, resolving issues, and so on.
Required:
1. Prepare the first-stage allocation of costs to the activity cost pools.
2. Compute the activity rates for the activity cost pools.
3. The company recently completed a 800 square foot carpet-cleaning job at the Flying N Ranch—a 50-mile round-trip journey from the company’s offices in Bozeman. Compute the cost of this job using the activity-based costing system.
4. The revenue from the Flying N Ranch was $179.60 (800 square feet @ $22.45 per hundred square feet). Calculate the customer margin earned on this job.
1) First stage allocation
| Cleaning carpets | Travel Jobs | Job Support | Others | Total | |
| Wages | 110200 | 17400 | 0 | 17400 | 145000 |
| Cleaning supplies | 26000 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 26000 |
| Cleaning equipment depreciation | 11730 | 0 | 0 | 5270 | 17000 |
| Vehicle expenses | 0 | 24640 | 0 | 7360 | 32000 |
| Office expenses | 0 | 0 | 34800 | 23200 | 58000 |
| President’s compensation | 0 | 0 | 26880 | 57120 | 84000 |
| Total | 147930 | 42040 | 61680 | 110350 | 362000 |
2) Activity rate
| Activity rate | |
| Cleaning carpets | 147930/8500 = 17.40 per hundred square feet |
| Travel jobs | 42040/233000 = 0.18 per miles |
| Job Support | 61680/2000 = 30.84 per job |
3) Total Cost
| Cleaning carpets (17.40*8) | 139.20 |
| Travel jobs (50*.18) | 9 |
| Job Support | 30.84 |
| Total Job Cost | 179.04 |
4) Customer margin = 179.60-179.04 = 0.56
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