1. 2 The district judge for Linn County would like to estimate the costs of trying civil cases versus
criminal cases. Most costs can be directly traced to one type of case or the other. However, the
costs of operating the court clerk's office, the central records office and the court recorder pool
are more problematic. A recent study revealed the following costs and percentages of time that
each department spent servicing one another relative to actual court cases Court Clerk Central
Records Recorder Pool Civil Criminal Ca Costs ses Cases $50,000 [ Clerk] 20,000 [Records].3
30,000 [ Pool] 2 4 A. Allocate the service[support] department costs to the two types of cases
using the direct method. Show all your work.
Solution
A) Allocate Service Cost Using direct method
First we have to calculate the factors to apportion service department overheads:
We then multiply the service department overhead by the above factors to obtain the amount of
overhead to be allocated to each production department.
Department Civil Cases Criminal Case
Clerk 0.2/0.7 0.5/0.7
Record 0.4/0.5 0.1/0.5
Pool 0.2/0.4 0.2/0.4