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Cost Accounting Videos 27 videos

Cost Accounting: What is a Cost: Cost Versus Expense?
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What is a Cost: Cost Versus Expense? Cost and expense are pretty similar terms when looking at traditional definitions but they’re a little diffe...

Cost Accounting: How Can Unit Fixed Costs Mislead the Misled?
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How can unit fixed costs mislead the misled? Unit fixed costs can be misleading because the fixed cost per unit decreases as production increases;...

Cost Accounting: What Is Differential Analysis?
2 Views

What is Differential Analysis? Differential analysis is a strategy used to make the best decision. Possible choices are compared to determine which...

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Cost Accounting: What Is Differential Analysis? 2 Views


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What is Differential Analysis? Differential analysis is a strategy used to make the best decision. Possible choices are compared to determine which one has the best cost given the benefits it will provide.

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Transcript

00:00

And finance Allah shmoop What is differential analysis All right

00:08

people Well it's a cost accounting term that asks How

00:11

could we do our business differently and better Different version

00:15

of you know doing our bidness Okay so you work

00:18

in the accounting department of Whisper Whisker the leading provider

00:21

of beard hair implants for chin bald millennial men Your

00:25

boss comes to you with a project Currently you use

00:28

one bad hormone therapy for one of your more popular

00:31

procedures because as whisper whiskers states in its brochures the

00:35

wombats lustrous hair gives your new beard the inviting pen

00:39

ability Your special someone will love However one bats are

00:43

on the endangered species list minor detail and lately whisper

00:46

whisker has been getting a lot of bad PR from

00:48

the pro wombat lobby So your boss wants to make

00:50

us switch well there are two options On one hand

00:53

you're a boss says that the purchasing department can get

00:56

a deal on Angora rabbit glands But on the other

00:59

hand the RND department says musk ox glands worked much

01:02

better for the hormone therapy you provide He wants to

01:05

let you figure out which option costs less on a

01:08

per procedure basis Assuming everything else is equal well to

01:11

figure it out you're going to use differential analysis Basically

01:15

you look at the various potential solutions and see which

01:17

one makes the most sense You run the numbers A

01:19

musk ox Eagle Land provides enough hormone for seventeen therapy

01:23

sessions However they're hard to farm in The special humane

01:26

extraction technique is expensive Each gland cost you a grand

01:29

for angora as well It's much cheaper They're smaller and

01:32

easier to handle Therefore each rabbit gland only cost two

01:35

hundred fifty dollars However you get less hormone from each

01:38

gland in the hormone is less potent so each angora

01:41

gland is only good enough for four therapy sessions So

01:44

you're spending two hundred fifty bucks for for therapy sessions

01:46

with the Angora and you're spending a grand for seventeen

01:49

sessions for the musk ox Well it's Keone differential analysis

01:52

to get rid of as much noise as possible so

01:55

you reduce the calculations here too The one unit scenario

01:57

like compare apples to apples in this guy Jason glands

02:00

to glance for this analysis well you're keeping all cost

02:03

the same it once the hormone is acquired The procedure

02:06

is the same whether musk ox or in glands or

02:09

you for the rabbit gland The hormone cost for the

02:11

procedure will run sixty to fifty each time There's the

02:14

math for musk ox while the cost is about fifty

02:17

eight eighty to everything else remaining equal Well you'll be

02:20

better off better profit margins that is going with the

02:22

musk ox because it's chief for well the price for

02:25

the animal glands is called the differential cost It's the

02:28

cost that will change as part of the change that's

02:30

being made right It's differentiating the analysis here Meanwhile large

02:34

number of other cost stay the same The doctor to

02:36

perform the hormone insertion the facility where the therapy takes

02:39

place the insurance the advertising and so on None of

02:43

these costs get impacted by the switch in the source

02:45

of the hormone So you let your boss know and

02:47

he gets the wheels in motion It's set up the

02:49

musk ox farms at least until the musk ox lobby

02:52

gets wind of it Oh those musk ox people are

02:54

such a pain differential analysis will also let you know

02:57

when something doesn't matter like you use a special dye

03:00

in some of your premium procedures It makes the beards

03:03

whatever color a person wants They can match their you

03:06

know natural hair color or go wild Rainbow Wild is

03:10

popular feature these days Fire orange however is the most

03:13

popular color You also offer a tight teal that's well

03:17

not so popular We'll fire orange outsells type deal by

03:20

a three to one ratio The problem Fire orange is

03:22

significantly more expensive like five times more Should you discontinue

03:27

fire orange and have sales people pushed the cheaper tight

03:30

Teel Well probably no not really The customer wants With

03:33

customer wants right a therapy session is worth five hundred

03:36

dollars in revenue The tight he'll die needed for a

03:39

session costs a dollar fire Orange costs five dollars Yes

03:43

it's five times more but it's nearly negligible on a

03:45

relative basis like as a total of the five hundred

03:48

dollars in revenue you get It's almost a rounding error

03:50

if discontinuing fire orange drop sales even a percent while

03:54

the move will end up hurting profit in the long

03:56

run The gland switch situation was a pretty simple example

03:59

but differential analysis It can get complicated quickly Take this

04:03

seemingly straightforward scenario You make a line of branded beard

04:06

maintenance products combs and decorative ties You make them in

04:10

America with union labor The cost to whisper whiskers all

04:14

in is about thirty seven dollars an hour for the

04:16

union labor you face competition from China Their products are

04:19

about ninety percent as good as yours but they're half

04:22

the price Is there a way to be able to

04:24

make your product such that you could drop prices by

04:27

a third even and still be competitive Alright while the

04:30

differential analysis here can you train a foreign labor force

04:33

to do about same job is your union workers do

04:35

in Chicago and get them to do it for five

04:38

bucks an hour And will there be tariffs or import

04:41

duties and other frictions like shipping costs and shipping risk

04:44

If you do go ahead and make the switch and

04:46

you know make him in Mexico or China or the

04:48

Philippines or somewhere and oh what about the fine print

04:50

in those union contracts How long are you obligated to

04:53

keep your expensive union US force Like maybe you have

04:56

two years of payroll that you have to get through

04:58

so maybe it's not worth is too expensive to switch

05:01

Differential analysis divides itself naturally into short term and long

05:05

term decisions as well Kind of like a balance sheet

05:07

like a short term analysis might revolve around discounting last

05:10

year's model of beard ty to clear them off the

05:12

shelves and make room for this year's models which now

05:15

boast a delicious cappuccino sent will long term Well what

05:19

if we used robots to make the combs and beard

05:21

ties instead of bothering with a human workforce at all

05:24

No robot union right The cap ax to build those

05:27

robots is a long term decision like you don't just

05:30

make him configure him And in four months get your

05:32

money back Well same deal with big distribution decisions like

05:35

partnering with Walmart or trying to enter the lucrative Russian

05:38

millennial market or China or Somalia while getting into Somalia

05:42

Isn't that hard It's you know getting out that compose

05:45

it challenge there What

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