Statistics Act, 1999
R 385
Postal Services Act, 1998 (Act No. 124 of 1998)Accounting Separation Regulations for Reserved Postal Services12. Attribution Steps |
| 1) | All revenues, costs and assets are to be attributed to businesses, cost centres and product/service segments on the basis of causality. |
| 2) | The Licensed Operator must specify the detailed methodologies that an operator adopts, based on respective plant configurations, transport network, retail outlet classifications, operating practices and information capabilities, and must describe them in the Procedures Manual. |
| 3) | The broad attribution steps are as follows: |
| a) | All revenues, costs and assets, including the cost of capital, that are recorded in the operator's financial records are allocated to businesses and cost centres and then subsequently allocated to other cost pools on a common basis. |
| b) | Revenues are allocated or assigned to products and services based on accounting records or sampling. |
| c) | Support activity costs are indirectly attributed to cost centres, businesses and unregulated services using the most reasonable cost driver available. For example, human resource costs may be attributed to primary activities using the number of staff performing each of the activities. |
| d) | Business and Cost centre activities are allocated to individual products and services using the most reasonable cost driver available. For example, collection costs may be attributed to postal services using mail collection volumes. |
| e) | Revenues and costs are accumulated by product/service to derive profit/loss statements by product/service. |
| 4) | The attribution approach is a tiered attribution process beginning with the identification of directly attributable costs and progressively attributing indirect costs on the basis of cost driver relationships. |
