For the past 52 years, Harold Averkamp (CPA, MBA) has worked as an accounting supervisor, manager, consultant, university instructor, and innovator in teaching accounting online. He is the sole author of all the materials on AccountingCoach.com.
Author:
Harold Averkamp, CPA, MBA
Job order costing or job costing is a system for assigning and accumulating manufacturing costs of an individual unit of output. The job order costing system is used when the various items produced are sufficiently different from each other and each has a significant cost. (When a company’s output consists of continuous flows of identical, low-cost units, the process costing system is more appropriate.)
Since there is a significant variation in the items manufactured, the job order costing system requires a separate job cost record for each item (or each job or special order). The job cost record will report each item’s direct materials and direct labor that were actually used and an assigned amount of manufacturing overhead.
The job cost records also serve as the subsidiary ledger or documentation for the manufacturer’s cost of the work-in-process inventory, the finished goods inventory, and the cost of goods sold.
A few examples of the use of job order costing are:
