How to Calculate Production Costs: Definition, Types, and Examples

Every company needs data on production costs to determine the pricing of the products they sell. To understand the concept of production costs itself, there are several things that need to be learned:

In addition to the discussion in this article, you can also learn more about various business strategies with Billed. This product allows you to learn various business tips and tricks with experts so that your business can grow. Without further ado, let’s find out what the definition of production costs is in the following discussion!

What is meant by production costs?

Production costs are the value sacrificed for services or goods that are expected to provide current or future benefits to an organization.

Examples include 

  • land, 
  • machinery, 
  • raw materials, 
  • employee salaries, and 
  • buildings.

What do production costs consist of?

There are five types of production costs that affect a product’s selling price from a company.

  • Fixed costs
  • Variable costs
  • Marginal cost
  • Average cost
  • Total cost

These production costs have many different components with three main types of production cost components. However, there are three main types of production cost components. We will explore these three main components in the following discussion.

Elements of Production Costs

Each company considers these three elements crucial.

Raw Material Cost

There are expenses associated with raw materials or direct materials. Production costs refer to the expenses a company incurs to purchase and convert raw materials into finished products.

For example, a food company spends money on purchasing food to be processed into finished goods. All these are raw material costs.

Human Resource Costs

Next, there are HR costs or human resources or labor costs, namely costs incurred by the company to pay wages for HR or labor.

This cost is also called direct labor. In terms of production costs, direct labor costs refer only to the expenses for workers directly involved in the production process.

Factory Overhead Costs

Overhead costs support all production processes. They do not directly link to production but facilitate smooth operation.

Examples include: 

  • stationery, 
  • electricity, and 
  • rent costs.

What Factors Affect Production Costs?

Costs for production can also vary depending on factors that influence them, including:

  • Demand or request
  • Technology
  • Exchange rate
  • Tax
  • Interest rate
  • Material costs
  • Amount of capital
  • The number of goods to be produced

To determine the right production costs for your business, you need to know how to calculate them first.

How to Calculate Production Costs?

Here is the calculation of each component of production costs:

Raw material

First, you have to calculate the raw materials that appear as items in the income statement in the accounting period. How to calculate it is:

Raw material costs = Balance at the beginning + Purchase of new raw materials – Balance at the end of the period

Labor costs

To determine labor costs, you must determine hourly rates as well as social security, health, bonuses, retirement, etc.

Calculation:

Gross wages: annual hours worked x gross wages per hour.

Working hours : annual working hours – non-working hours.

Add all other expenses like bonuses, benefits, and payroll taxes.

Overhead Costs

When calculating overhead costs, which refer to all indirect cost burdens in a business, you examine the budget and the costs incurred for services or products to generate profits.

The formula is:

Overhead costs = electricity costs + salary costs + inventory costs + insurance costs + cleaning costs

The formula above is only for general overhead costs, while companies can have different lists of expenses for overhead costs.

Production cost

So, after determining the cost of raw materials, labor, and overhead costs, you just need to calculate the production cost formula by:

Production costs = raw material costs + labor or HR costs + overhead costs

Here’s an example of how to calculate production costs using raw materials, labor, and overhead costs.

  • Raw material cost:$10,000,000
  • Labor cost: $5,000,000
  • Overhead costs: $7,500,000

To calculate the production costs, you just add up all the costs, which is $22,500,000.

There is a method to calculate the cost of production per unit of product:

Cost per unit = (electricity + rental fee + raw material cost + labor cost) / product quantity

So, those are various things about production costs in business.

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