Алексей Кравец

Julius holds a Master of Finance with a specialization in information technology from Colorado State University and a Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies from Indiana University. Julius will be a Ph.D Finance candidate with a research focus on financial technology and its impact on investor behavior.

Member of the Investopedia Financial Review Board

Over 15 years of experience in financial and operations management, logistics management, and non-profit management

Corporate finance and accounting professor and U.S. State Department Fulbright Program award recipient with academic research interests in: FinTech, Asset Management, Capital Structures, Islamic Banking and Economics, Supply Chain Finance, Microfinance, and Corporate Governance

Julius Mansa has been an operations, finance, and accounting professional for over 15 years, with a sharpened financial management expertise in various industries including financial services, real estate, logistics, and the nonprofit sector.

Julius’s career includes various corporate finance roles ranging from senior financial analyst to financial controller in the logistics and real estate development sectors, in addition to leading the finance function of several non-profit organizations. Within the realm of logistics, Julius has experience in supply chain finance management for regional and international third-party logistics (3PL) companies. Additionally, for over 3 years, Julius acted as a fractional Chief Financial Officer for an Indianapolis based real estate development firm with a multi-million dollar portfolio.

After his rewarding experience doing fractional CFO consulting, in early 2020, Julius opened MaxPoint Advisors, a CFO advisory firm that focuses on medium sized businesses that operate in fast growing sectors and gross between 2 million and 10 million in revenue.

As an emerging academic and researcher, Julius serves as a professor at two institutions of higher education in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA where his current and past lecture areas include intermediate accounting, managerial finance, risk management, corporate valuation, portfolio management, and financial economics. In 2020, Julius was awarded a prestigious and highly competitive U.S. Department of State Fulbright Program research award in the area of financial technology.

CURRENTLY

CFO Consultant and Finance and Accounting Professor

RESIDES IN

Indianapolis, Indiana

EDUCATION

Colorado State University, Indiana University

EXPERTISE

Corporate Finance, Fintech, Investing, Personal Finance, Real Estate

Many service companies do not have any cost of goods sold at all. COGS is not addressed in any detail in generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), but COGS is defined as only the cost of inventory items sold during a given period. Not only do service companies have no goods to sell, but purely service companies also do not have inventories. If COGS is not listed on the income statement, no deduction can be applied for those costs.1costs.

Costs of revenue exist for ongoing contract services that can include raw materials, direct labor, shipping costs, and commissions paid to sales employees. These items cannot be claimed as COGS without a physically produced product to sell, however. The IRS website even lists some examples of "personal service businesses" that do not calculate COGS on their income statements. These include doctors, lawyers, carpenters, and painters.5painters.

Both operating expenses and cost of goods sold (COGS) are expenditures that companies incur with running their business. However, the expenses are segregated on the income statement. Unlike COGS, operating expenses (OPEX) are expenditures that are not directly tied to the production of goods or services.6services.

Cost of goods sold (COGS) is calculated by adding up the various direct costs required to generate a company’s revenues. Importantly, COGS is based only on the costs that are directly utilized in producing that revenue, such as the company’s inventory or labor costs that can be attributed to specific sales. By contrast, fixed costs such as managerial salaries, rent, and utilities are not included in COGS. Inventory is a particularly important component of COGS, and accounting rules permit several different approaches for how to include it in the calculation.

COGS does not include salaries and other general and administrative expenses. However, certain types of labor costs can be included in COGS, provided that they can be directly associated with specific sales. For example, a company that uses contractors to generate revenues might pay those contractors a commission based on the price charged to the customer. In that scenario, the commission earned by the contractors might be included in the company’s COGS, since that labor cost is directly connected to the revenues being generated.

In theory, COGS should include the cost of all inventory that was sold during the accounting period. In practice, however, companies often don’t know exactly which units of inventory were sold. Instead, they rely on accounting methods such as the First In, First Out (FIFO) and Last In, First Out (LIFO) rules to estimate what value of inventory was actually sold in the period. If the inventory value included in COGS is relatively high, then this will place downward pressure on the company’s gross profit. For this reason, companies sometimes choose accounting methods that will produce a lower COGS figure, in an attempt to boost their reported profitability.

Both operating expenses and cost of goods sold (COGS) are expenditures that companies incur with running their business. However, the expenses are segregated on the income statement. Unlike COGS, operating expenses (OPEX) are expenditures that are not directly tied to the production of goods or services.6

Typically, SG&A (selling, general, and administrative expenses) are included under operating expenses as a separate line item. SG&A expenses are expenditures that are not directly tied to a product such as overhead costs. Examples of operating expenses include the following:

Rent

Utilities

Office supplies

Legal costs

Sales and marketing

Payroll

Insurance costs

COGS can easily be manipulated by accountants or managers looking to cook the books. It can be altered by:

Allocating to inventory higher manufacturing overhead costs than those incurred

Overstating discounts

Overstating returns to suppliers

Altering the amount of inventory in stock at the end of an accounting period

Overvaluing inventory on hand

Failing to write-off obsolete inventory

When inventory is artificially inflated, COGS will be under-reported which, in turn, will lead to higher than the actual gross profit margin, and hence, an inflated net income.

Investors looking through a company’s financial statements can spot unscrupulous inventory accounting by checking for inventory buildup, such as inventory rising faster than revenue or total assets reported.

Special Identification Method

The special identification method uses the specific cost of each unit if merchandise (also called inventory or goods) to calculate the ending inventory and COGS for each period. In this method, a business knows precisely which item was sold and the exact cost. Further, this method is typically used in industries that sell unique items like cars, real estate, and rare and precious jewels.

Many service companies do not have any cost of goods sold at all. COGS is not addressed in any detail in generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), but COGS is defined as only the cost of inventory items sold during a given period. Not only do service companies have no goods to sell, but purely service companies also do not have inventories. If COGS is not listed on the income statement, no deduction can be applied for those costs.1

Examples of pure service companies include accounting firms, law offices, real estate appraisers, business consultants, professional dancers, etc. Even though all of these industries have business expenses and normally spend money to provide their services, they do not list COGS. Instead, they have what is called "cost of services," which does not count towards a COGS deduction.

Costs of revenue exist for ongoing contract services that can include raw materials, direct labor, shipping costs, and commissions paid to sales employees. These items cannot be claimed as COGS without a physically produced product to sell, however. The IRS website even lists some examples of "personal service businesses" that do not calculate COGS on their income statements. These include doctors, lawyers, carpenters, and painters.5

Many service-based companies have some products to sell. For example, airlines and hotels are primarily providers of services such as transport and lodging, respectively, yet they also sell gifts, food, beverages, and other items. These items are definitely considered goods, and these companies certainly have inventories of such goods. Both of these industries can list COGS on their income statements and claim them for tax purposes.

\begin{aligned} &\text{COGS}=\text{Beginning Inventory}+\text{P}-\text{Ending Inventory}\\ &\textbf{where}\\ &\text{P}=\text{Purchases during the period}\\ \end{aligned}

The latest goods added to the inventory are sold first. During periods of rising prices, goods with higher costs are sold first, leading to a higher COGS amount. Over time, the net income tends to decrease.

The average price of all the goods in stock, regardless of purchase date, is used to value the goods sold. Taking the average product cost over a time period has a smoothing effect that prevents COGS from being highly impacted by extreme costs of one or more acquisitions or purchases.

Because COGS is a cost of doing business, it is recorded as a business expense on the income statements.1 Knowing the cost of goods sold helps analysts, investors, and managers estimate the company’s bottom line. If COGS increases, net income will decrease. While this movement is beneficial for income tax purposes, the business will have less profit for its shareholders. Businesses thus try to keep their COGS low so that net profits will be higher.

Cost of goods sold (COGS) is the cost of acquiring or manufacturing the products that a company sells during a period, so the only costs included in the measure are those that are directly tied to the production of the products, including the cost of labor, materials, and manufacturing overhead.2

For example, the COGS for an automaker would include the material costs for the parts that go into making the car plus the labor costs used to put the car together. The cost of sending the cars to dealerships and the cost of the labor used to sell the car would be excluded.

Furthermore, costs incurred on the cars that were not sold during the year will not be included when calculating COGS, whether the costs are direct or indirect. In other words, COGS includes the direct cost of producing goods or services that were purchased by customers during the year.

COGS only applies to those costs directly related to producing goods intended for sale.

\begin{aligned} &\text{COGS}=\text{Beginning Inventory}+\text{P}-\text{Ending Inventory}\\ &\textbf{where}\\ &\text{P}=\text{Purchases during the period}\\ \end{aligned}

​

COGS=Beginning Inventory+P−Ending Inventory

where

P=Purchases during the period

​

Inventory that is sold appears in the income statement under the COGS account. The beginning inventory for the year is the inventory left over from the previous year—that is, the merchandise that was not sold in the previous year. Any additional productions or purchases made by a manufacturing or retail company are added to the beginning inventory. At the end of the year, the products that were not sold are subtracted from the sum of beginning inventory and additional purchases. The final number derived from the calculation is the cost of goods sold for the year.

The balance sheet has an account called the current assets account. Under this account is an item called inventory. The balance sheet only captures a company’s financial health at the end of an accounting period.3 This means that the inventory value recorded under current assets is the ending inventory. Since the beginning inventory is the inventory that a company has in stock at the beginning of its accounting period, it means that the beginning inventory is also the company’s ending inventory at the end of the previous accounting period.

The value of the cost of goods sold depends on the inventory costing method adopted by a company. There are three methods that a company can use when recording the level of inventory sold during a period: First In, First Out (FIFO), Last In, First Out (LIFO), and the Average Cost Method. The Special Identification Method is used for high-ticket or unique items.4

The earliest goods to be purchased or manufactured are sold first. Since prices tend to go up over time, a company that uses the FIFO method will sell its least expensive products first, which translates to a lower COGS than the COGS recorded under LIFO. Hence, the net income using the FIFO method increases over time.

Cost of goods sold (COGS) refers to the direct costs of producing the goods sold by a company. This amount includes the cost of the materials and labor directly used to create the good. It excludes indirect expenses, such as distribution costs and sales force costs.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Cost of goods sold (COGS) includes all of the costs and expenses directly related to the production of goods.

COGS excludes indirect costs such as overhead and sales & marketing.

COGS is deducted from revenues (sales) in order to calculate gross profit and gross margin. Higher COGS results in lower margins.

The value of COGS will change depending on the accounting standards used in the calculation.

The COGS is an important metric on the financial statements as it is subtracted from a company’s revenues to determine its gross profit. The gross profit is a profitability measure that evaluates how efficient a company is in managing its labor and supplies in the production process.

Since transfer prices are usually equal to, or lower than, market prices, the entity selling the product is liable to get less revenue. There is also the fact that it is a complicated process. Market prices are based on supply-demand relationships, whereas transfer prices may be subject to other organizational forces. Additionally, intra-entity animosity might arise, especially if the transfer price is appreciably higher or lower than the market price as one of the parties will feel cheated.

To better understand the effect of transfer pricing on taxation, let's take the example above with entity A and entity B. Assume entity A is in a high tax country, while entity B is in a low tax country. It would benefit the organization as a whole for more of Company ABC's profits to appear in entity B's division, where the company will pay lower taxes.

In that case, Company ABC may attempt to have entity A offer a transfer price lower than market value to entity B when selling them the wheels needed to build the bicycles. As explained above, entity B would then have a lower cost of goods sold (COGS) and higher earnings, and entity A would have reduced sales revenue and lower total earnings.

Companies will attempt to shift a major part of such economic activity to low-cost destinations to save on taxes. This practice continues to be a major point of discord between the various multinational companies and tax authorities like the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The various tax authorities each have the goal to increase taxes paid in their region, while the company has the goal to reduce overall taxes.

Transfer prices are used when individual entities of a larger multi-entity firm are treated and measured as separately run entities. While it is common for multi-entity corporations to be consolidated on a financial reporting basis, they may report each entity separately for tax purposes. When these entities report their own profits a transfer price may be necessary for accounting purposes to determine the costs of the transactions.

Transfer prices will usually be equal to or lower than market prices which will result in cost savings for the entity buying the product or service. It increases transparency in intra-entity transactions. Finally, the desired product is readily available so supply chain issues can be mitigated.

Transfer price, also known as transfer cost, is the price at which related parties transact with each other, such as during the trade of supplies or labor between departments. Transfer prices may be used in transactions between a company and its subsidiaries, or between divisions of the same company in different countries.

Transfer prices are used when individual entities of a larger multi-entity firm are treated and measured as separately run entities. It is common for multi-entity corporations to be consolidated on a financial reporting basis; however, they may report each entity separately for tax purposes.

A transfer price arises for accounting purposes when related parties, such as divisions within a company or a company and its subsidiary, report their own profits. When these related parties are required to transact with each other, a transfer price is used to determine costs. Transfer prices generally do not differ much from the market price. If the price does differ, then one of the entities is at a disadvantage and would ultimately start buying from the market to get a better price.

For example, assume entity A and entity B are two unique segments of Company ABC. Entity A builds and sells wheels, and entity B assembles and sells bicycles. Entity A may also sell wheels to entity B through an intracompany transaction. If entity A offers entity B a rate lower than market value, entity B will have a lower cost of goods sold (COGS) and higher earnings than it otherwise would have. However, doing so would also hurt entity A's sales revenue.

If, on the other hand, entity A offers entity B a rate higher than market value, then entity A would have higher sales revenue than it would have if it sold to an external customer. Entity B would have higher COGS and lower profits. In either situation, one entity benefits while the other is hurt by a transfer price that varies from market value.

Regulations on transfer pricing ensure the fairness and accuracy of transfer pricing among related entities. Regulations enforce an arm’s length transaction rule that states that companies must establish pricing based on similar transactions done between unrelated parties. It is closely monitored within a company’s financial reporting.

Transfer pricing requires strict documentation that is included in the footnotes to the financial statements for review by auditors, regulators, and investors. This documentation is closely scrutinized. If inappropriately documented, it can burden the company with added taxation or restatement fees. These prices are closely checked for accuracy to ensure that profits are booked appropriately within arm's length pricing methods and associated taxes are paid accordingly.1

Transfer prices are used when divisions sell goods in intracompany transactions to divisions in other international jurisdictions. A large part of international commerce is actually done within companies as opposed to between unrelated companies. Intercompany transfers done internationally have tax advantages, which has led regulatory authorities to frown upon using transfer pricing for tax avoidance.

When transfer pricing occurs, companies can manipulate profits of goods and services, in order to book higher profits in another country that may have a lower tax rate. In some cases, the transfer of goods and services from one country to another within an intracompany transaction can also allow a company to avoid tariffs on goods and services exchanged internationally. The international tax laws are regulated by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and auditing firms within each international location audit the financial statements accordingly.

Adam Hayes's expertise lies in the social studies of economic behavior, finance, and technology. He writes about the influence of social forces on economic choice and fintech's impact on society, including innovations such as Bitcoin & blockchains, robo-advisors, and insurtech. Adam has also written on topics such as behavioral finance, personal investing, financial risk, and derivatives. His past expertise includes more than a decade of professional work on Wall Street as a derivatives trader and private wealth manager. Prior to academia, Adam worked on Wall Street for 15 years as a derivatives trader and broker, with a brief stint in private wealth management and insurance.

Adam received his bachelor's from Cornell University, a Master's in Economics from The New School for Social Research, and a PhD in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Adam is also a CFA charterholder.

"Too many people are scared of 'finance' for whatever reason. Finance needs to be de-mystified so that this fear is turned into the ability to recognize and take advantage of economic opportunities through investment, saving, and smart spending."

Ph.D., CFA

CURRENTLY

Economic Sociologist, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

RESIDES IN

Tel Aviv, Israel

EDUCATION

The University of Wisconsin-Madison, The New School for Social Research (NSSR), Cornell University

EXPERTISE

Investing, Trading, Behavioral Finance

15+ years of professional experience as a derivatives trader and five years in private wealth management

Writer and editor at Investopedia since 2014

Lecturer at University of Wisconsin-Madison and Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Instructor for the University of Nicosia's MSc program in digital currencies.

CFA charterholder, FINRA Series 7 & 63, and Life & Health Insurance Licenses

PhD in economic sociology, MA in economics