Cost allocation is an important tool for any business to understand expenses. It can help managers understand the sustainability of their services and identify costs before they get out of control.

From clean toilets to working computers, your company incurs many costs that it cannot assign to one particular "cost object" -- a product, project, department or service. You must nonetheless cover ...

Federal regulations require that similar costs be treated consistently as either direct costs or indirect costs, in like circumstances. This regulation imposes a requirement on the University to ...

Not-for-profit entities (NFPs) are under constant pressure to devote an increasing portion of their expenditures to accomplishing their mission programs. While this goal sounds appealing, the NFP must ...

Welcome back to the Cost Corner, where we provide practical insight into the complex cost and pricing requirements that apply to Government contractors. This is the second article in a multi-part ...

Explore budgeting methods, like zero-, activity-, & priority-based, incremental, envelope system, and the 50/30/20 rule.

The IRS issued proposed regulations that affect taxpayers who produce or resell property and allocate costs under the simplified production method or simplified resale method (REG-126770-06). The ...

We collaborate with the world's leading lawyers to deliver news tailored for you. Sign Up for any (or all) of our 25+ Newsletters. Some states have laws and ethical rules regarding solicitation and ...

Prior work has examined models in which the reciprocal cost allocation method yields allocation rates that are equal to the marginal costs of operating service departments. We extend this work by ...

Daniel Liberto is a journalist with over 10 years of experience working with publications such as the Financial Times, The Independent, and Investors Chronicle. Tara Anand / Investopedia Cost ...