Aplicación del costeo basado en actividades (ABC) en la determinación de un índice de calidad del agua

Abstract

During the decade of the 80’s world-wide market faced changes in the philosophy of businesses with a globalized approach supported on technological advances pretending to obtain competitive products, reduce production costs, and appropriately respond to the specific needs of the clients. The objectives of this assay were a) to evaluate the application of the Activity-Based Costing system (ABC) in determining the costs of a water quality index (ICA), and b) to compare its results with the Traditional Costing System (SCT). The methodology of both, ABC and SCT was compared, including their technical (CT) and professional components (CP), in a 12 months period. It was found that, in the total cost, 9 out of the 20 parameters were overvalued by the SCT and the remaining 11 were undervalued. In the studied period, the PC were clearly overvalued in 12 out of the 20 parameters, and the remaining 8 were undervalued by SCT. In the same sense, the CT were overvalued in 9 out of the 20 parameters, and the remaining 11 were undervalued by SCT. The obtained results allow to emphasize that the ABC is quite suitable for small enterprises of the service sector, since it represents a more precise method than the SCT, for determining the costs of the studied company.