Job Order Costing in Service Companies:

Job order costing is also used in service organizations such as law firms, movie studios, hospitals, and repair shops, as well as manufacturing companies. In a law firm, for example, each client represents a "job," and the costs of that job are accumulated day by day on a job cost sheet as the client's case is handled by the firm. Legal forms and similar inputs represent the direct materials for the job; the time expended by attorneys represents the direct labor; and the costs secretaries, clerks, rent, depreciation, and so forth, represent the overhead.

In a movie studio, each film produced is a "job," and costs for direct materials (customs, props, film, etc.) and direct labor (actors, directors and extras) are accounted for and charged to each film's job cost sheet. A share of the studio's overhead costs, such as utilities, depreciation of equipment, wages of maintenance workers, and so forth, is also charged to each film. However, the method used by some studios to distribute overhead costs among movies are controversial and sometimes result in lawsuits.

In sum, the reader should be aware that Job order costing is a versatile and widely used costing method, and may be encountered in virtually any organization that provides diverse products or services.

You may also be interested in other relevant articles:

1. Measuring Direct Materials Cost in Job Order Costing System

2. Measuring Direct Labor Cost in Job Order Costing System

3. Application of Manufacturing Overhead

4. Job Order Costing System--The Flow of Costs

5. Multiple Predetermined Overhead Rates

6. Under-applied overhead and over-applied overhead calculation.

7. Disposition of any balance remaining in the manufacturing overhead account at the end of a period

8. Predetermined Overhead Rate and Capacity

9. Recording Non-manufacturing Costs

10. Recording Cost of Goods Manufactured and Sold

11. Job Order Costing in Services Companies

12. Use of Information Technology in Job Order Costing

13. Advantages and Disadvantages of Job Order Costing System

14. Job Order Costing Discussion Questions and Answers

15. Job Order Costing Exercises

16. Case Studies

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