The Intellectually Disabled Council has the responsibility for distributing government grants to fund support services for intellectually disabled people. The director is concerned that grants be distributed on an equitable basis, and asks Sue Jolley, the Council's management accountant, to estimate the cost of providing institutional care to clients with intellectual disabilities. Jolley decides to use activity-based costing in one of the state's larger institutions. Greenfields, to obtain an initial estimate of the costs of the services provided.
Working with a project team at Greenfields, she identifies the following major activities and costs for next year.

Although the needs of the individual clients vary tremendously, the project team identifies three major service types: high-dependency support, low-dependency support and outpatient support. Nigh-dependency and low-dependency clients live at Greenfields, while outpatients attend the centre on a daily basis. The average number of activities required to support each of the three types of clients each day is estimated as follows:
Greenfields activates consumed per client per day

Required:
1. Construct an Excel' spreadsheet to:
(a) Calculate the cost per unit of activity driver for each of the activities identified by the project team.
(b) Calculate the daily cost of supporting:
(i) A high-dependency client.
(ii) A low-dependency client.
(iii) An outpatient client.
2. Review the list of activities and suggest some major activities that may have been overlooked by the project team.
3. Do you think activity-based costing is useful in this situation? Explain your answer.

Greenfields Activities performed Activity Cost (in $'o00s) Annual volume of activity drivers Cook meals $500 100 000 meals Transport clients (internal) 200 4000 hours of assistance Transport clients (external) 450 6000 hours of assistance Clean rooms 100 20 000 rooms cleaned Bath clients 144 16 000 baths given Dress clients 30 10 000 clients dressed Administer medication 120 75 000 doses administered Provide occupational therapy Provide physiotherapy 90 600 classes 250 5000 hours of physiotherapy Run sheltered workshop 150 200 days of operation Low-dependency Outpatient Activity Cook meals High-dependency Intemal transport Extemal transport 3 2