Baker Company, an Ohio company that sells a branded product regionally to retail customers in Midwest. It normally sells its product for $40 per unit; however, it has received a one-time offer from a private-brand company on the West Coast to buy 1,000 units at $25 per unit. Even though the company has excess capacity to produce the units, the president of the company immediately rejected the offer; however, the chief accountant stated that it might be a profitable opportunity for the company, even though $25 is below its unit cost of $28, calculated as follows: Cost
Direct material $12.00
Direct labor      8.00
Depreciation and other fixed costs      6.00
Total unit cost $26.00

Calculate the net advantage (disadvantage) of accepting the special order:

a. $5,000
b. ($5,000)
c. $25,000
d. ($25,000)

Activity-based costing (abc) is not truly a cost collection mechanism as much as it is an inventory valuation method. the main purpose for implementing an activity-based cost system is to try to overcome some of the cost distortions that occur in traditional costing from product differences when there are variations in size and complexity. however, one of the disadvantages of utilizing abc is that the additional information gathering necessary to implement costing with that level of detail might be beyond the reach of some companies with resource or financial constraints. with this in mind, what kinds of industries or companies do you think would benefit most from using activity-based costing and why? in designing or modifying an accounting system to capture appropriate costs for abc, what considerations do you think would need to be made?