Support departments:

• Information systems
• Plant maintenance

Cost accumulation is the collection of cost data in some organized way by means of an accounting system.

The correct answer to question is option A. Salaries are fixed payments to employees for their performance and productivity working on a monthly basis. However, wages are payments to employees working on an hourly or daily basis.

Cost is a resource sacrificed or forfeit to achieve a specific objective.

The single-rate method does not discriminate between fixed and variable costs. It allocates costs in each cost pool to cost objects using a single charging rate. In contrast, the dual-rate method divides the cost of each support department into two separate pools, variable and fixed. It distributes the cost of each pool by using a different charging rate. When using either the single-rate method or the dual-rate method, managers can allocate support-department costs to operating divisions based on either a budgeted rate or the eventual actual cost rate (Datar and Rajan, 2018: 622). 

The correct answer is A.

Accounting deals with the the direct costs of other departments.

Cost allocation is the process of assigning costs in a cost pool to the appropriate cost objects with the help of representatives.

The correct answer is D.

Indirect costs are the costs that are related to the product but cannot be traced easily and also there may be some costs that are not included product, but they are consumed for the production purposes.

The third objective that provides incentives for decision-making is achieved when the cost allocation effectively empowers authorized individual managers to act autonomously with the goals of the senior management.

The correct answer is E.

Only basic payment, overtime payment, and production and efficiency payment of direct labor are considered direct labor costs.

There are three important inventory items in manufacturing organizations:

1. Raw material and supplies inventory

2. Work-in-process inventory

3. Finished goods inventory

The correct answer is C. Direct raw material cost, direct labor cost, manufacturing (factory) overhead cost is manufacturing cost. Non-manufacturing cost is period expenses and recorded as an expense in the
current accounting period. 

Comparability: This quality will enable managers to identify changes in the business over time.

Direct manufacturing costs, raw materials, and labor are traced directly to the departments. For example, in particular, direct raw materials and supplies used in the production departments and direct labor costs are directly traced to these departments. In the same way, direct raw materials and supplies and direct labor costs used in the support section are also traced to these departments. Indirect costs (manufacturing overhead), a predetermined cost driver is allocated to the departments that use these resources. For example, in all operating and support sections of the factory, the cost of the responsible manager is an indirect cost and must be allocated to all departments. While the indirect labor for inspection of the output of the two operating departments would be allocated only to those two operating departments (Blocher, Stout, and Cokins, 2010: 234). The correct answer is C.

Controlling the consumption of user departments to support services is not one of the objectives of cost allocation.

Unit cost information is also helpful in making important marketing decisions such as:Determining the selling price of a product, 

Step-down Method

In this method, the cost of service departments will be allocated to other service and operating departments depending on whether they provide services or not. In the method, first of all, the support departments should be ranked in the order that the step-down allocation will continue.

The correct answer is B.

All of them are necessary for achieving effective control.