How to understand the products and services of logistics enterprises

Types of logistics costs
Logistics costs generally fall into the following categories:
1. General classification: direct or operational costs, indirect costs;
2. Classified by logistics function: transportation cost, circulation and processing cost, distribution cost, packaging cost, loading and unloading cost, storage cost;
3. Classified according to the scope of logistics activities: supply logistics cost, internal logistics cost, sales logistics cost, recovery logistics cost, waste logistics cost.

Composition of logistics costs
Modern logistics costs are more extensive and run through the whole process of business activities, including all logistics costs from the beginning of the supply of raw materials to the delivery of goods to consumers. Logistics costs are classified according to different standards, and can be divided into enterprises' own logistics costs and those incurred by entrusting third parties to engage in logistics business, namely entrusting logistics costs. According to logistics function, logistics cost can be classified as follows:

1. Transportation costs. Mainly includes labor costs, such as transportation personnel salaries, benefits, etc. Operating expenses, such as operating vehicle fuel expenses, depreciation, highway transportation management fees, etc. Other expenses such as travel expenses.
2. Storage costs. It mainly includes the cost of building, purchasing or leasing warehouse facilities and the cost of various warehousing operations.
3. Circulation processing costs. There are mainly circulation processing equipment cost, circulation processing materials cost, circulation processing labor cost and other.
4. Packing cost. It mainly includes packaging material cost, packaging machinery cost, packaging technology cost, packaging labor cost and so on.
5. Handling and handling costs. It mainly includes labor cost, asset depreciation cost, maintenance cost, energy consumption cost and other related expenses.
6. Logistics information and management costs. This includes travel expenses, meeting expenses, networking expenses, management information system fees and other incidental expenses incurred by the enterprise for logistics management.

Logistics cost characteristics
There are many differences between logistics cost and other costs, but only two stand out, which are attributed to the phenomenon of logistics iceberg and the phenomenon of alternating profit and loss.
The phenomenon of logistics iceberg was originally a metaphor proposed by professor shimazu from waseda university in Japan to study the problem of logistics cost. In the field of logistics, it has been extended into one of the basic theories of logistics, and it is another description of the drucker theory.
Logistics iceberg theory is that, in the enterprise, the vast majority of the costs of logistics are mixed with other fees, and can be separately accounting item, only a small part of this part is visible, often misunderstood by people as he is the outline of the logistics cost, actually is just floating on the surface, can be seen the tip of the iceberg.
Alternate and losses of the phenomenon, is another characteristics of logistics cost, logistics cost of placing signage at many, the cost of different department management in enterprise is often in the field of domain, therefore, of the division of this department, makes unable to coordinate and optimize the logistics activities, tended to decline, the loss of profit in the long phenomenon is often. In fact, in any large system, such contradiction often occurs between system elements. The main purpose of system engineering is to seek overall optimization from system height.
The calculation condition of logistics cost
According to the iceberg theory of logistics cost, there are many logistics cost hidden, logistics cost can be large or small, completely depends on its calculation scope and method. Therefore, in the calculation of logistics costs, the calculation conditions must be defined first. If the calculation condition is ignored, the logistics cost will lose its significance. The calculation conditions of logistics costs refer to the scope of logistics, the scope of logistics functions and the scope of accounting subjects.
Scope of logistics as the name implies, refers to the length of the beginning and end of logistics. Logistics is commonly referred to as raw material logistics, which refers to the logistics when raw materials are transferred from suppliers to factories; In-plant logistics, namely raw materials, semi-finished products, the transfer and storage of finished products in different workshops and locations of the factory; Logistics from factory to warehouse; The range from warehouse to customer logistics is quite broad. Therefore, as the calculating object of logistics cost, it will cause great changes in logistics cost.
2. Logistics function scope the logistics function scope refers to which logistics function is used as the calculation object among the numerous logistics functions such as transportation, storage, distribution, packaging, loading and unloading, and information management. It can be seen that the cost of taking all logistics functions as the calculation object will be greatly different from that of only taking transportation and storage as the calculation object.
3. The scope of logistics cost calculation subject the scope of cost calculation subject refers to the problem of which subject is included in the accounting subject. In the account, there are external expenses such as freight expense and storage expense, as well as internal expenses such as labor cost, depreciation cost, repair cost and fuel cost. So many expenditure items, which is included in the cost calculation object, the size of the logistics cost impact. Therefore, the choice of scope of these three aspects determines the size of logistics costs. When making calculation conditions, the enterprise should not be blind or careless, but based on the actual situation of the enterprise, to decide its own reasonable logistics cost calculation range. Only when the costs are compared under the same conditions can the correct results be obtained. Therefore, in order to compare the logistics cost, the industry standards should be unified as soon as possible.

The main problems of logistics cost accounting
1. The scope and content of logistics accounting is not comprehensive and only involves part of logistics expenses. At present, enterprises' daily logistics accounting covers the logistics of huanjing, which is more important than procurement logistics and sales logistics, while ignoring the accounting of other logistics links. According to the connotation of modern logistics, logistics should include: supply logistics, production logistics, internal logistics, sales logistics, reverse logistics, etc. The corresponding logistics cost includes: supply logistics cost, production logistics cost, enterprise internal logistics cost and so on.
From the content of the accounting, a considerable number of enterprises only include the expenses paid to external transportation and storage enterprises into the special costs, while the logistics expenses within the enterprises are often mixed with the production expenses, sales expenses and management expenses of the enterprises, which are easy to be neglected or even not included in the cost accounting. As a result, the logistics cost is underestimated or vague. It affects the authenticity of accounting information and is not conducive to the decision-making of stakeholders and internal managers.
2. The disclosure of logistics accounting information is mixed with the disclosure of other costs and expenses. It can be seen from the disclosure of logistics accounting information that logistics activities run through the operation of enterprises, so the accounting of related logistics expenses is basically integrated into the cost accounting of products, and mixed with other costs and expenses into related subjects. For example, the transportation cost, handling cost, packaging cost, storage cost, reasonable loss in transit, and sorting cost before warehousing, etc. incurred for the acquisition of inventory are calculated as the actual cost of inventory, and then deducted from the total sales revenue as part of the cost of sales to obtain the total profit. As logistics accounting information is mixed with other information, the data information about logistics needs to be summarized from relevant accounting information. The process is complex and the data is of poor timeliness, which is not conducive to logistics management and performance evaluation.
3. Part of logistics cost is part of enterprise indirect cost, and its distribution method still follows the traditional accounting method. As logistics costs to increase the contribution of corporate profits, indirect expenses in traditional accounting methods based on the direct labor hours or machine hours in the production process not only distorts the allocation of product, service, cost, and is not conducive to production performance assessment, evaluation, and senior managers of the decisions on the basis of these data is not correct.

Logistics cost accounting method
1. Divide and calculate logistics costs according to payment pattern.
Charge logistics cost according to freight, storage fee, packaging material fee, own distribution fee (internal distribution fee), personnel fee, logistics management fee, logistics interest and other payment forms. From this, we can know the total cost of logistics, and what expenditure projects cost the most. It is very effective to understand the importance of logistics cost rationalization and to consider what should be the focus of logistics cost management.
2. Divide logistics costs by functions and calculate them.
According to the packaging, distribution, storage, handling, information, logistics management and other functions to calculate logistics costs. From this method, we can see which function is more cost consuming than the method of calculating cost according to form, which can further find the crux of realizing logistics rationalization. Moreover, standard logistics cost (unit number, quality, container cost) can be calculated, activity management can be conducted, and reasonable objectives can be set.
3. Method of dividing and accounting logistics costs by applicable objects.
According to the applicable object of logistics cost accounting, can analyze the logistics cost used in which object. For example, goods, regions, customers or business units can be calculated as applicable objects.
To calculate the logistics cost by the store or business office is to calculate the comparison between the logistics cost of each business unit and the sales amount or gross income, so as to understand the problems existing in the logistics cost of each business unit and strengthen management.
According to the customer calculation of logistics costs, and can be divided into standard unit price calculation and actual unit price calculation of two calculation methods. The cost of logistics is calculated according to the customer, which can be used as the reference for selecting the customer, determining the level of logistics service and so on.
The cost of logistics according to commodity accounting refers to the cost of logistics calculated by calculating the cost of logistics according to the function, which is used to allocate various kinds of commodities according to different standards. This method can be used to analyze the profit and loss of all kinds of commodities. In practice, the cross ratio between the gross income of the purchase and shipment difference and the turnover rate of commodities should be considered.
4. ABC cost method is adopted to calculate logistics costs.
Activity-based cost analysis is the most promising method to determine and control logistics cost artificially.
Based on the activity, the accounting method of assigning the resource consumed by the enterprise to the activity according to the resource motivation and the activity cost collected by the activity to the cost object according to the activity motivation. The theoretical basis is that production leads to the occurrence of activities, activities consume resources and lead to the occurrence of costs, and products consume activities. Therefore, the cost calculation procedure under activity-based costing is to allocate the costs of various resource pools to each activity, and then allocate the costs of each activity pool to the final product or service.
Activity-centered can not only provide relatively accurate cost information, but also provide non-financial information to improve operations. Activity-based costing can well combine cost information and non-financial information, that is, activity-based cost allocation and activity-based cost analysis and management.
The activity-based costing method can be used to calculate and manage enterprise logistics, which can be divided into the following four steps:
(1) define the operations involved in enterprise logistics system. Homework is the unit of work, and the type and amount of work will vary with the enterprise. For example, in a customer service department, jobs include three jobs dealing with customer orders, solving product problems, and providing customer reports.
(2) identify the resources involved in the enterprise logistics system. Resource is the source of cost. The resources of an enterprise include direct labor, direct materials, production maintenance costs (such as the wage cost of purchasing personnel), indirect manufacturing costs and the costs outside the production process (such as advertising costs). The definition of resources is based on the definition of operations. Each operation should involve related resources. Resources irrelevant to operations should be excluded from logistics accounting.
(3) identify resource drivers and allocate resources to operations. The activity determines the consumption of resources. This relationship is called resource motivation. Resource drivers relate resources and activities, and allocate resource costs on the general ledger to activities.
(4) identify cost drivers and allocate activity costs to products or services. Activity motivation reflects the logical relationship between cost objects and activity consumption. For example, the product with the most problems will generate the most customer service calls, so the activity cost of solving customer problems will be allocated to corresponding products according to the number of calls (activity motivation here).

Method of logistics cost analysis
There are many methods for logistics cost analysis. The following is the main content of comprehensive analysis and detailed analysis.

1. Comprehensive analysis of logistics cost of distribution center:
After calculating the logistics cost of the distribution center, the following ratios can be calculated, and then the actual situation of the logistics cost of the distribution center can be compared with the previous year and the year before the year before the year before the year before. It can also be compared with other enterprises in the same industry, or with other industries.
(1) logistics cost rate per unit sales volume = logistics cost/sales volume x 100%
The higher this ratio is, the lower the elasticity of price will be. From the data of chain enterprises over the years, we can roughly understand its trend. In addition, by comparing with the same industry and outside the industry, we can further understand the logistics cost level of distribution center.
This ratio is greatly affected by price changes and trading conditions changes, so it still has some defects as an assessment indicator.
(2) unit operating expenses logistics cost ratio = logistics cost /(sales volume + general management fee) x 100%
Based on the ratio of logistics cost to operating expenses (sales volume + general management fee), the proportion of logistics cost of chain enterprises can be judged. Moreover, this ratio is not affected by the change of purchase cost, and the obtained value is relatively stable. Therefore, it is suitable for the logistics rationalization index of chain enterprises' distribution centers.
(3) logistics function cost ratio = logistics function cost/total logistics cost x 100%. This indicator can specify the ratio of logistics function cost to total logistics cost, such as packaging cost, transportation cost, storage fee, handling fee, circulation processing fee, information circulation fee, logistics management fee, etc.

2. Detailed analysis of logistics cost of distribution center:
Through comprehensive analysis, we can understand the changes of the logistics cost and the change trend, but for the reason of the change of the logistics cost, we need to further classified according to function, a detailed analysis of the logistics costs, and then puts forward countermeasures, detailed analysis of the indicators have four classes, through the analysis of the chronological these four types of indicators or according to the distribution center within the department, the facilities, classification comparison and comparing with the same industry other enterprise, can grasp the development trend of the logistics cost and their differences.

(1) indicators related to transportation and distribution:
Loading rate = actual weight/standard weight x 100%
Vehicle start rate = monthly total start/number of vehicles owned x 100%
Run rate = monthly total run times/number of machines x 100%
Monthly mileage = monthly total mileage/number of vehicles
Unit mileage = the actual monthly mileage of three fees/total monthly mileage
(driving fee = repair fee + inner and outer tire fee + oil fee)
Freight per unit volume = transport charge/total transport volume

(2) related indicators of custody activities:
Warehouse utilization = inventory area/total area x 100%
Inventory turnover = annual outbound amount (quantity)/ average inventory amount (quantity)= annual outbound amount (quantity) * 2/(initial inventory amount + year-end inventory amount)

(3) related indicators of handling activities:
Work for the company