Stage 1 - can be done i two ways, direct method or step down method. How cost can be allocated to departments. Though allocating cost to responsibility centres managers can understand the economic effect of their decisions. It encourages a particular pattern of resource usage. Your should translate the service to a department. You often start with service department that service most of the departments. 1.Direct method is a method of allocating support department costs where each support departments costs are allocated directly to production departments that consume part of the support departments output. You will not recognise the cost between support department. 2. Step down method, cost is going to be allocated to another support method and to the other service departments. Is a method of allocating support department costs that partially recognises services provided by one support department to another. First you should identify the cost driver, secondly measure the consumption of the allocation base in the production departments. thirdly allocate the support department cost based on the relative amount of the allocation base consumed in each production department. Before you continue with stage 2 you need to come up with total production costs, total cost for each department. Stage 2 - allocate overhead costs to products, can be done in two ways (abc is not going to be described) either by plant-wide overhead rate or by department overhead rate. Trace the cost from