ABSTRACT
Overhead is a composite term used to describe the aggregation of indirect material, indirect labour and indirect expense, and it sometimes dealt with methods which are debatable, it is none the less a costing reality, with the tendency to assume increasing importance as mechanisation within industry spreads. It is the incapacity of overhead for precise identification with any saleable commodity which creates the need for an approach which is quite different from that which is usually applied to cost of a direct nature. It deals with the entirely different situation which is encountered in dealing with overhead that the fundamental objectives of overhead manipulation are often obscured within a maze of mathematical meanderings, and it is to be regretted that, to some, the essential purpose behind costing for overhead has become indistinguishable from the elaborate processes introduced to achieve that purpose.
