Analysis of Calculation Methods Currently Practised at V4 Agricultural Holdings

Abstract

This paper assesses calculation methods in the Visegrad 4 countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) and, based thereon, recommends and considers activity-based costing (ABC) in the agricultural sector, while evaluating manager knowledge of ABC as an appropriate alternative to outdated, “conventional” methods of calculating costs that are used in practice. It was found that a majority of agricultural holdings in the V4 are currently using conventional cost calculation methods and the most frequent reason for their failure to incorporate ABC is low awareness among managers. Farms and agricultural holdings that have introduced ABC and utilise it to assign their costs evaluate its benefits highly positively, in particular, ABC’s more accurate identification of costs, mainly overheads; more effective cost management and the accuracy of price estimates. From this analysis and assessment, introduction of ABC is recommended for companies in order to obtain the different benefits associated with the method. Successfully implementing ABC leads to a number of advantages, especially in the inevitable decision-making agricultural holdings face about high overhead costs. From the information obtained, managers at agricultural holdings have little information, in most cases, about ABC as an appropriate alternative to the outdated “conventional” cost estimate methods practised today. It is therefore important to work on raising managers' awareness of new approaches to costing by publishing scientific articles with specific examples from practice, pointing out the advantage of the ABC method, especially with high overheads, which are almost the rule in agricultural holdings.