Optimale Auswahl von Kostentreibern in der Prozeßkostenrechnung

Summary To allocate overhead costs to cost objects, activity-based costing (ABC) uses cost drivers that measure the cost objects’ resource utilization. In selecting cost drivers, accuracy must be traded off against ABC-system complexity. On one hand, a high accuracy in allocating overhead costs often requires a high number of cost drivers. On the other hand, a small number of cost drivers is desirable to achieve acceptable information cost and to make the ABC-system easier for management to understand. In this paper we propose a model for optimal cost driver selection. Our approach differs from existing approaches in that we take into account the possibility of combining several cost drivers. This extension yields a more accurate cost allocation with the same ABC-system complexity.