L’errore da non commettere nel calcolo dei costi dei tuoi prodotti

In this video, I'll talk about the mistakes you shouldn't make when calculating the costs of your products or customers. First, I'll explain how to calculate the cost of a product. All costs are simply attributed to the product, regardless of whether they are variable or fixed. For variable costs, the attribution is simple: if a product cost 50, there's no doubt about it. Fixed costs, however, are more complicated, because they don't vary with individual sales. Fixed costs are divided into: • Direct costs, which are generally attributed based on the portion used (for example, the cost of personnel working on the product/service is a direct fixed cost by definition) • Indirect costs and overheads, such as rent. These are not attributed based on the portion used (they are more abstract). This is why indirect allocation criteria are assigned, such as quantities produced, product value, or other parameters. Therefore, the cost of a product is the sum of the allocated costs. This applies to the following cases: • Variable costs • Direct fixed costs • Overhead fixed costs But what are the problems with this traditional accounting method? 1. The allocation criteria are arbitrary. This means that two different people doing these calculations will arrive at different results. The only exception is single-product companies (which are rare). 2. The fixed costs assigned to a single product depend on sales. Specifically, they decrease if sales increase (the same costs are spread across more products), and vice versa, they increase if sales decrease (the costs are spread across fewer products). As you can see, with this traditional calculation method, it's very difficult to establish a reference price because the costs attributable to a single item continue to vary depending on how much you sell. 3. Finally, the third problem is that the impact of a single sale on profit is unknown. This happens because by allocating fixed costs so widely, it's impossible to understand how much profit a single sale generates. Furthermore, it increases the risk of making errors when setting prices (especially minimum prices). For this last point in particular, you'll find a concrete numerical example starting at 6:58. You'll notice that this traditional method seems logical, but it's actually misleading! We'll see how to solve this problem in future videos. That's all for now. Thank you, as always, for watching, and I invite you to subscribe to the YouTube channel to be notified every time a new video is released. I also remind you that you can download the first chapter of my book, "Numbers Don't Lie," for free by clicking this link: https://www.numerium.it/capitolo-gratis/ Or purchase it directly by clicking this link: https://www.numerium.it/numeri-non-me... Happy reading! Claudio Cerutti