Overheadsatser

Overheadsatser, often translated as overhead rates, are used in cost accounting to allocate indirect costs to cost objects such as products, services, or departments. They express the portion of a company's overhead expenses that is assigned to a unit of output or activity. Overhead costs include items like utilities, depreciation, rent, supervisory salaries, and maintenance, which cannot be traced directly to a single product.

Organizations estimate overhead rates during budgeting and accounting periods. The rate is typically calculated by dividing estimated total overhead by a chosen allocation base, such as direct labor hours, direct labor cost, or machine hours. When using a plant-wide rate, a single rate applies to all products. In departmental rates, each department has its own rate. More refined methods, such as activity-based costing, use multiple cost drivers to assign costs to products based on the actual consumption of activities.

Allocation bases are crucial and influence cost accuracy. Common bases include direct labor hours, machine hours, direct labor costs, or material costs. The rate can be fixed or variable, and some systems distinguish fixed overhead from variable overhead.

In practice, overheadsatser are used to price products, value inventories under absorption costing, and perform variance analysis by comparing applied overhead to actual overhead. Critics argue that simple plant-wide rates can distort product costs, especially in diverse production environments. Proponents point to simplicity and consistency. In modern costing, ABC and capacity-based rates offer more precise allocations, at the cost of greater data requirements.

In Swedish accounting, overhead rates are part of cost allocation and budgeting practices, often referred to as omkostnadssatser or indirect cost rates.