The Chemical Free Clean Co (C Co) provides a range of environmentally-friendly cleaning services to business customers, often providing a specific service to meet a client’s needs. Its customers range from large offices and factories to specialist care wards at hospitals, where specialist cleaning equipment must be used and regulations adhered to. C Co offers both regular cleaning contracts and contracts for one-off jobs. For example, its latest client was a chain of restaurants which employed them to provide an extensive clean of all their business premises after an outbreak of food poisoning.

The cleaning market is very competitive, although there are only a small number of companies providing a chemical free service. C Co has always used cost-plus pricing to determine the prices which it charges to its customers but recently, the cost of the cleaning products C Co uses has increased. This has meant that C Co has had to increase its prices, resulting in the loss of several regular customers to competing service providers.

The finance director at C Co has heard about target costing and is considering whether it could be useful at C Co.

Required:
(a) Briefly describe the main steps involved in deriving a target cost. (3 marks)