Implementation of Activity Based Costing method in commercial company – case study

The study refers to the issue of Activity Based Costing implementation. The article presents experiences gained during an implementation that was performed between 2002–2003 in the Polish division of an international holding in the electro-technical branch. The authors present in a detailed manner the problems they came across during the execution of the project and the adopted methods of solving them. The procedure is described from the moment of making decision to implement ABC, through the identification of resources, the processes and activities identification, to the evaluation of the cost of the individual activities and defined cost objects. In particular, the problem of gathering information is treated (methods of carrying out interviews and problems linked to the interviews, interpretation of accounting data, which do not always identify in a clear way essential cost types, the problem of finding precise cost drivers, which at the same time can be applied in practice).