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Activity Based Costing for Manufacturing and Services

Traditional overhead allocation quietly cross subsidises unprofitable products and customers, distorting decisions in both factories and service firms. This course shows finance teams how to design and run an activity based costing model that traces overheads to the activities that cause them. Using South African manufacturing and services examples, delegates learn to expose the true cost of products, customers and channels.

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What you will be able to do

  • Explain why volume based overhead allocation misstates product and customer cost.
  • Identify activities, resource pools and appropriate cost drivers.
  • Assign overheads to products, services and customers using activity rates.
  • Compare traditional and activity based results to surface hidden cross subsidies.
  • Use activity cost insight to inform pricing, outsourcing and process decisions.
  • Plan a practical activity based costing rollout without over engineering the model.

Course outline

  1. 01Limitations of traditional costing
  2. 02Core concepts of activity based costing
  3. 03Mapping activities and resource pools
  4. 04Selecting and validating cost drivers
  5. 05Building activity rates and cost assignments
  6. 06Customer and channel profitability analysis
  7. 07Acting on activity based insights
  8. 08Implementation pitfalls and quick wins

Who should attend

Management accountants, cost accountants, financial analysts and operations finance staff seeking more accurate product and customer costing.

Dates, venues and fees

DatesVenueDaysFeeCalendarRegister
28 to 30 Sep 2026Johannesburg3R13,000Closed
29 Sep to 1 Oct 2026Cape Town3R13,000Register
30 Sep to 2 Oct 2026Durban3R13,000Register
5 to 7 Oct 2026Pretoria3R13,000Register
6 to 8 Oct 2026Windhoek3US$1,500Register
7 to 9 Oct 2026Gaborone3US$1,500Register
12 to 14 Oct 2026Maseru3US$1,500Register
13 to 15 Oct 2026Mbabane3US$1,500Register
14 to 16 Oct 2026Lusaka3US$1,500Register
19 to 21 Oct 2026Harare3US$1,500Register
20 to 22 Oct 2026Lilongwe3US$1,500Register
21 to 23 Oct 2026Blantyre3US$1,500Register
26 to 28 Oct 2026Mozambique3US$1,500Register
27 to 29 Oct 2026Nairobi3US$1,500Register
28 to 30 Oct 2026Dar es Salaam3US$1,500Register
2 to 4 Nov 2026Kigali3US$1,500Register
3 to 5 Nov 2026Kampala3US$1,500Register
4 to 6 Nov 2026Accra3US$1,500Register
9 to 11 Nov 2026Lagos3US$1,500Register
10 to 12 Nov 2026Cairo3US$1,500Register
11 to 13 Nov 2026Mauritius3US$1,500Register
16 to 18 Nov 2026Dubai3US$1,500Register
17 to 19 Nov 2026Online3US$900Register

Fees are per delegate. South African venues are priced in rand; other locations and online in US dollars. Fees exclude 15% VAT where applicable. Group bookings of three or more delegates from the same organisation qualify for a reduced rate; contact us for a quotation.

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