Abstract This paper illustrates a marginal approach for allocating joint costs in the context of a practical budget planning process. Contrary to the marginal approach based on nonlinear programming, the only demand data requirement of this version of the marginal approach is a set of budgeted sales quantities. Unlike the traditional sales value and physical unit joint cost allocation methods, which only generate joint cost allocations, this approach simultaneously provides 1) guidelines to production and marketing decision makers and 2) cost allocations to accountant. The purpose of this paper is to introduce accounting educators and practitioners to an approach which is conceptually sound and easily understood and applied in the real world. To achieve this purpose, the paper first describes the origins and usefulness of the marginal approach in general and follows with a simple graphical illustration of a budget planning model. Then the implications of this approach for income reporting and the evaluation of by-products are discussed. Finally some of the problems of implementation are considered.
Cheng et al. (Tue,) studied this question.