Product Costing Fitness Evaluation

Answer each question and keep track of your points to get a quick diagnosis.

Manufacturers know now more than ever that a deep understanding ofcost is critical to the organization’s ability to survive unpredictable times.This quick survey can help you check the health of your current productcosting program and help you establish a game plan to improve yourteam’s costing fitness level.

About Your CompanyWhat’s your primary product costing system?

How many products do you produce?

Spreadsheets 1 ERP System 3 Dedicated Costing System 5

Less than 500 1 500 to 5,000 3 More than 5,000 5

About Your Costing ProcessNo/Never 1 Maybe/Sometimes 3 Yes/Always 5

We can calculate product costs for each unique SKU. We can calculate,track and analyze the detailed cost for every product using a custom set ofattributes that are meaningful to our business.

Our product cost models are agile and can adapt to changing businessrequirements. We manage product costing rules centrally and can easilyupdate and track changes to those rules and methods.

We allocate overhead costs to individual products. Our modelsassign overhead spending directly to individual products using relevant,meaningful drivers.

There is a single set of cost data across departments. From procurementto supply chain, every department has access to the same product cost data.

We create, maintain, and compare multiple versions or scenarios of costanswers. We can calculate an unlimited number of cost answer sets for a givenproduct, period, or scenario using the same underlying business rules and logic.

Costing Process Score

Points

Company Attribute Score

Starting your costingfitness journey begins withtaking a deep look at yourcurrent processes. Moveaway from short-sighteddecisions based on justreducing cost andestablish practices todetermine the real impactof cost changes on overallprofitabilty.

Costing is a regular part ofyour company’s routineand you’ve streamlinedsome processes, but youstill have room to improve.Start by expanding costinformation to audiencesbeyond accounting andoperations and help themunderstand the benefits ofrobust cost data.

Your costing fitness isahead of the pack – butdon’t let that slow youdown! With cost dataestablished as a criticalKPI for your company,look for ways to refineprocesses and enabletechnology to leveragecost information as astrategic advantage.

About Your Decision Process

Product costs are recalculated for all manufactured productsfrequently. We can calculate product cost answers monthly, weekly, daily,or even on demand for our entire catalog of products.

We can easily select and change input data sets, attributes, andassumptions to calculate product costs. Our product costing processcan easily handle changes to raw prices, volume and mix changes,substitutions and alternate BOMs, or changes to overhead spending.

Our costing methods are consistent for all manufacturing locations.We use the same applications and processes to calculate product costresults across the company.

We’ve established an integrated costing model that is centralized andregularly maintained. Our models are application-based (no spreadsheets!)and connect to other systems to collect, publish and share data.

We have a strong data governance program to validate data andresults. Whether data is bad or missing, or the calculated model results arebeyond acceptable limits, we can easily find and investigate the issue.

Our executives recognize the importance of accurate product costdata. Cost data is considered a critical KPI when evaluating performance,making strategic decisions, and rewarding (or deterring) behavior.

You’re Pretty Active(36-49)

You’re a Pro(50-65)

You’re a Novice(12-35)

Add each section total for the Total Score

Connect With Us on Social!

No/Never 1 Maybe/Sometimes 3 Yes/Always 5

Decision Process Score

Mid-size and large enterprises power their costing programs with ImpactECS.

To learn more about the leading cost system for manufacturing companies,

visit www.3csoftware.com/impactecs.