Chapter 5 – Activity-Based Costing and Management
Use the following information to answer Questions 58 & 59.
Bridges and Lloyd, an accounting firm, provides consulting and tax planning services. For
many years, the firm’s total administrative cost (currently $250,000) has been allocated to
services on the basis of billable hours to clients. A recent analysis found that 65% of the firm’s
billable hours to clients resulted from tax planning services, while 35% resulted from
consulting services.
The firm, contemplating a change to activity-based costing, has identified three components
of administrative cost, as follows:
In-house computing charges
Miscellaneous office costs
A recent analysis of staff support found a strong correlation between the number of staff
personnel and the number of clients served (consulting, 20; tax planning, 60). In contrast, in-
house computing and miscellaneous office cost varied directly with the number of computer
hours logged and number of client transactions, respectively. Consulting consumed 30% of
the firm’s computer hours and had 20% of the total client transactions.