Expertise · Guides & Comparisons

The questions people actually ask.

Plain-language guides and side-by-side comparisons on cost-to-serve, costing methods and pricing. Each answers one question completely, the way a controller or CFO would ask it.

Definition

What Is Cost & Profitability Intelligence?

The discipline behind every guide here: managing profit, not just revenue and cost.

Read →How-to

How to Calculate Cost-to-Serve

The step-by-step method, and where a spreadsheet stops working.

Read →Compare

ABC vs Traditional Costing

When a single overhead rate distorts the truth, and when it is fine.

Read →Diagnosis

Why Your ERP Hides Profitability

The ERP stops at gross margin; the cost of serving hides in overhead.

Read →Compare

Contribution Margin vs Cost-to-Serve

Why a healthy margin can still hide a loss-making customer.

Read →Insight

The Cost of Small Orders

Most order cost is fixed, so small orders quietly destroy margin.

Read →Insight

The Overhead Allocation Problem

Peanut-butter costing makes everything look average. It is not.

Read →Pricing

Minimum Order Quantity Pricing

Anchor the minimum to break-even, not a round number.

Read →Reference

The Cost Driver Library

Worked examples of what actually moves the minutes, activity by activity.

Read →Diagnosis

Cost & Productivity

The savings were real and the margin never moved. Why that happens.

Read →

More expertise

Analysis Methods Industries Who we help

See it on your own numbers.

The Profit Check takes 10 minutes, with no data upload.

Duration: 10 minutes
You receive: Score, 7 dimensions, sector benchmark
Price: Free, no email needed

Take the Profit Check

Proof

A distributor in New Zealand. €1.335M of cost-to-serve made visible, then halved, and 830 loss-making customers brought down to 295.

Read the case study →

Who you would be talking to

Miguel Guimarães, Founding Partner

Cost and profitability practitioner for 25+ years. Presented the Damco cost-to-serve case at Managing for Profit (Amsterdam RAI, December 2009), on the same programme as Robert S. Kaplan.

Call +351 910 313 731

Frequently asked questions

What will I find in the Guides and comparisons hub?

You will find practical, how-to content that teaches the methods themselves rather than selling a service. It covers building a TDABC model from scratch, running a cost-to-serve analysis, and side-by-side comparisons such as ABC versus traditional costing or contribution margin versus cost-to-serve. Each guide is written to help you understand and apply the technique to your own data.

What is the difference between a guide and a comparison?

A guide walks you through a single method or task in sequence, for example the steps to build a Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing model. A comparison sets two approaches against each other, explaining where each one fits, what it measures and what it misses. Comparisons help you choose the right method; guides help you execute it correctly.

Do I need a costing background to use these guides?

No. The guides assume no prior expertise in management accounting. Concepts such as cost pools, cost drivers and capacity cost rates are defined as they appear, and worked numerical examples show how the calculations flow. The aim is to make accurate costing accessible to operators and managers, not only to specialists.

What is TDABC and why is it covered here?

Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing (TDABC) is a costing method introduced by Robert Kaplan and Steven Anderson in Harvard Business Review in 2004. It estimates the cost of activities using two inputs: the cost per unit of capacity (usually time) and the time each transaction consumes. It is simpler to maintain than traditional ABC, which is why it anchors most guides in this hub.