Normas para la tramitación de siniestros

cash. No cash outlay takes place and depreciation expense serves only to reduce the book value of the capital asset over a period of time.

(f) Depreciation cost of a capital asset is a direct cost.

(g) Indirect costs may be traceable or untraceable to a specific product or a specific department. For example, salary paid to the general manager of maintenance department.

Types of Cost Data Needed

The quality of the accounting data has a direct influence on management's ability in the following aspects :

• To enter new markets,

• to take advantage or innovative transportation systems, • to choose between common carriers and private carriers, • to increase deliveries or inventories,

• to make changes in the configuration of distribution centres, • to restructure the inventory levels,

• to make changes in packaging and

• to determine the extent of automation in the order processing system.

Based on the information provided by the accounting system, the logistics managers should be able to find answers to the following questions

I. How do logistics costs affect contribution by product, territory, customer and sales person?

II. What are the costs of providing higher levels of customer service? What kind of trade-off are necessary? What are the incremental benefits and losses?

III. What is the optimal level of inventory? How much does it cost to hold inventory? How sensitive is the inventory level to changes in customer service levels or warehousing patterns?

IV. What mix of transport modes or carries should be used?

V. How many warehouses should be used in the field and where should they be located?

VI. How many production set ups should be used? Which plant will be used to produce what product? What are the optimum manufacturing plant capacities?

VII. What product packaging alternatives should be used? VIII. To what extent should the order system be automated?

IX. What distribution channels should be used?

To answer the above questions, managers must know what costs and revenues will change if the logistics system change. A product's contribution should be determined based on how corporate revenues, expenses and profitability would change if the product line were dropped.

TOTAL COST ANALYSIS APPROACH

The concept of total cost analysis

Many problems at the operational level in logistics management because all the impacts of specific decisions, both direct and indirect, are not taken into account throughout the corporate system. Too often decisions touch in one area can lead to unfortunate results in the other areas, change in policy on minimum order value, for example, may influence customer ordering patterns and lead to additional costs. Similarly changes in production schedules that aim to improve production efficiency

may lead to fluctuations in finished stock availability and thus affect customer service.

A. The problems associated with identifying with total system impact of distribution policies are immense. By its very nature logistics cuts across traditional company organization functions with cost impacts on most of those functions.

B. Conventional accounting systems do not usually assist in the identification of these company wide impacts frequently absorbing logistics related costs in other cost elements.

The cost of processing orders for eg. is an amalgam of specific costs incurred in different functional areas of the business which generally prove extremely difficult to bring together.

Figure (1.1) outlines the various cost elements involved in the complete order processing cycle, each of these elements having a fixed and variable cost component which will lead to a different total cost per order.

Fig. (1.1)

Stages in the order-to-collection cycle

C. Accounting practice for budgeting and standard-setting has touched to result in a compartmentalization of company accounts; thus budgets tend to be set on a functional basis.

The trouble in that policy costs do not usually configure themselves within the sense water tight boundaries. It is the nature of logistics that, like a stone thrown into a pond, the effects of specific policies spread beyond their immediate area of impact. (2) A. A further feature of logistics decisions which contributes to the complexity of generating appropriate cost information is that they are usually taken against the benchmark of an existing system.

The purpose of total cost analysis in this context is to identify the change in costs brought about by these decisions. Cost must therefore be viewed in incremental terms – the change to the system. Thus the addition of an extra warehouse to the distribution network will bring about cost changes in transport, inventory investment and communications.

It is the incremental cost difference between the two options which is the relevant accounting information for decisions making in this case.

Fig. (1.2) shows how total logistics costs can be influenced by the additional, or removal, of a depot from the system.

Order placement and communication.

Order Entry

Credit Check

Documentation

Order Pricing

Invoicing and Collection Delivery

Fig (1.2)

The total costs of a distribution network

To understand the demand of measuring logistics, it is necessary to review traditional accounting methods in terms of analysis requirements and to identify costs relevant to integral logistical systems.