15-24 Direct and step-down allocation. [Excel template] (LO 4) E-books, an online book retailer, has two operating divisions-corporate sales and consumer sales- and two support divisions-human resources and information systems. Each sales division conducts merchandising and marketing operations independently. E- books uses number of employees to allocate human resources costs and processing time to allocate information systems costs. The following data are available for September: Support Divisions Human Information Operating Divisions Corporate Consumer Resources Systems Sales Sales Budgeted costs incurred before any interdivision cost allocations $82,700 $234,400 $998,270 $489,360 Support work supplied by human resources division Budgeted number of employees Support work supplied by information systems division Budgeted processing time (in minutes) 320 21 42 28 1,920 1,600 Required 1. Allocate the support divisions' costs to the operating divisions using the direct method. 2. Rank the support divisions based on the percentage of their services provided to other support divisions. Use this ranking to allocate the support divisions' costs to the operating divisions based on the step-down method. 3. How could you have ranked the support divisions differently? Check Figure: 1. Allocation of HR costs to consumer sales division, $33,080