Variable costs and activity bases in decision making
The owner of Warwick Printing, a printing company, is planning direct labor needs for the upcoming year. The owner has provided you with the following information for next year's plans:
One Color | Two Color | Three Color | Four Color | Total | |
Number of banners | 212 | 274 | 616 | 698 | 1,800 |
Each color on the banner must be printed one at a time. Thus, for example, a four color banner will need to be run through the printing operation four separate times. The total production volume last year was 800 banners, as follows:
One Color | Two Color | Three Color | Total | |
Number of banners | 180 | 240 | 380 | 800 |
As you can see, the four-color banner is a new product offering for the upcoming year. The owner believes that the expected 1,000-unit increase in volume from last year means that direct labor expenses should increase by 125% (1,000 ÷ 800). What do you think?
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Chapter 21 Solutions
Accounting
- Computing unit costs at different levels of production French Fragrances, Ltd. budgeted for 12,000 bottles of perfume Belle during May. The unit cost of Belle was $20, consisting of direct materials, $7; direct labor, $8; and factory overhead, $5 (fixed, $2; variable, $3). What would be the unit cost if 10,000 bottles were manufactured? (Hint: You must first determine the total fixed costs.) What would be the unit cost if 20,000 bottles were manufactured? Explain why a difference occurs in the unit costs.arrow_forwardProduct costing and decision analysis for a service company Blue Star Airline provides passenger airline service, using small jets. The airline connects four major cities: Charlotte, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and San Francisco. The company expects to fly 170,000 miles during a month. The following costs are budgeted for a month: Blue Star management wishes to assign these costs to individual flights in order to gauge the profitability of its service offerings. The following activity bases were identified with the budgeted costs: The size of the companys ground operation in each city is determined by the size of the workforce. The following monthly data are available from corporate records for each terminal operation: Three recent representative flights have been selected for the profitability study. Their characteristics are as follows: Instructions Determine the fuel, crew, and depreciation cost per mile flown. Determine the cost per arrival or departure by terminal city. Use the information in (1) and (2) to construct a profitability report for the three flights. Each flight has a single arrival and departure to its origin and destination city pairs.arrow_forwardVariable costs and activity bases in decision making The owner of Dawg Prints, a printing company, is planning direct labor needs for the upcoming year. The owner has provided you with the following information for next year's plans: Each color on the banner must be printed one at a time. Thus, for example, a four-color banner will need to be run through the printing operation four separate times. The total production volume last year was 600 banners, as shown below. The four-color banner is a new product offering for the upcoming year. The owner believes that the expected 600-unit increase in volume from last year means that direct labor expenses should increase by 100% (600 + 600). What do you think?arrow_forward
- Step Costs, Relevant Range Bellati Inc. produces large industrial machinery. Bellati has a machining department and a group of direct laborers called machinists. Each machinist can machine up to 500 units per year. Bellati also hires supervisors to develop machine specification plans and oversee production within the machining department. Given the planning and supervisory work, a supervisor can oversee, at most, three machinists. Bellatis accounting and production history shows the following relationships between number of units produced and the annual costs of supervision and materials handling (by machinists): Required: 1. Prepare a graph that illustrates the relationship between direct labor cost and number of units produced in the machining department. (Let cost of direct labor be the vertical axis and number of units be the horizontal axis.) Would you classify this cost as a strictly variable cost, a fixed cost, or a step cost? 2. Prepare a graph that illustrates the relationship between the cost of supervision and the number of units produced. (Let cost of supervision be the vertical axis and number of units be the horizontal axis.) Would you classify this cost as a strictly variable cost, a fixed cost, or a step cost? 3. Suppose that the normal range of production is between 1,400 and 1,500 units and that the exact number of machinists is currently hired to support this level of activity. Further suppose that production for the next year is expected to increase by an additional 500 units. What is the increase in the cost of direct labor? Cost of supervision?arrow_forwardHart Manufacturing makes three products. Each product requires manufacturing operations in three departments: A, B, and C. The labor-hour requirements, by department, are as follows: During the next production period the labor-hours available are 450 in department A, 350 in department B, and 50 in department C. The profit contributions per unit are 25 for product 1, 28 for product 2, and 30 for product 3. a. Formulate a linear programming model for maximizing total profit contribution. b. Solve the linear program formulated in part (a). How much of each product should be produced, and what is the projected total profit contribution? c. After evaluating the solution obtained in part (b), one of the production supervisors noted that production setup costs had not been taken into account. She noted that setup costs are 400 for product 1, 550 for product 2, and 600 for product 3. If the solution developed in part (b) is to be used, what is the total profit contribution after taking into account the setup costs? d. Management realized that the optimal product mix, taking setup costs into account, might be different from the one recommended in part (b). Formulate a mixed-integer linear program that takes setup costs provided in part (c) into account. Management also stated that we should not consider making more than 175 units of product 1, 150 units of product 2, or 140 units of product 3. e. Solve the mixed-integer linear program formulated in part (d). How much of each product should be produced and what is the projected total profit contribution? Compare this profit contribution to that obtained in part (c).arrow_forwardFunctional-Based versus Activity-Based Costing For years, Tamarindo Company produced only one product: backpacks. Recently, Tamarindo added a line of duffel bags. With this addition, the company began assigning overhead costs by using departmental rates. (Prior to this, the company used a predetermined plantwide rate based on units produced.) Surprisingly, after the addition of the duffel-bag line and the switch to departmental rates, the costs to produce the backpacks increased, and their profitability dropped. Josie, the marketing manager, and Steve, the production manager, both complained about the increase in the production cost of backpacks. Josie was concerned because the increase in unit costs led to pressure to increase the unit price of backpacks. She was resisting this pressure because she was certain that the increase would harm the companys market share. Steve was receiving pressure to cut costs also, yet he was convinced that nothing different was being done in the way the backpacks were produced. After some discussion, the two managers decided that the problem had to be connected to the addition of the duffel-bag line. Upon investigation, they were informed that the only real change in product-costing procedures was in the way overhead costs are assigned. A two-stage procedure was now in use. First, overhead costs are assigned to the two producing departments, Patterns and Finishing. Second, the costs accumulated in the producing departments are assigned to the two products by using direct labor hours as a driver (the rate in each department is based on direct labor hours). The managers were assured that great care was taken to associate overhead costs with individual products. So that they could construct their own example of overhead cost assignment, the controller provided them with the information necessary to show how accounting costs are assigned to products: The controller remarked that the cost of operating the accounting department had doubled with the addition of the new product line. The increase came because of the need to process additional transactions, which had also doubled in number. During the first year of producing duffel bags, the company produced and sold 100,000 backpacks and 25,000 duffel bags. The 100,000 backpacks matched the prior years output for that product. Required: (Note: Round rates and unit cost to the nearest cent.) 1. CONCEPTUAL CONNECTION Compute the amount of accounting cost assigned to a backpack before the duffel-bag line was added by using a plantwide rate approach based on units produced. Is this assignment accurate? Explain. 2. Suppose that the company decided to assign the accounting costs directly to the product lines by using the number of transactions as the activity driver. What is the accounting cost per unit of backpacks? Per unit of duffel bags? 3. Compute the amount of accounting cost assigned to each backpack and duffel bag by using departmental rates based on direct labor hours. 4. CONCEPTUAL CONNECTION Which way of assigning overhead does the best jobthe functional-based approach by using departmental rates or the activity-based approach by using transactions processed for each product? Explain. Discuss the value of ABC before the duffel-bag line was added.arrow_forward
- Variable and Fixed Costs, Cost Formula, High-Low Method Li Ming Yuan and Tiffany Shaden are the department heads for the accounting department and human resources department, respectively, at a large textile firm in the southern United States. They have just returned from an executive meeting at which the necessity of cutting costs and gaining efficiency has been stressed. After talking with Tiffany and some of her staff members, as well as his own staff members, Li Ming discovered that there were a number of costs associated with the claims processing activity. These costs included the salaries of the two paralegals who worked full time on claims processing, the salary of the accountant who cut the checks, the cost of claims forms, checks, envelopes, and postage, and depreciation on the office equipment dedicated to the processing. Some of the paralegals time appears to vary with the routine processing of uncontested claims, but considerable time also appears to be spent on the claims that have incomplete documentation or are contested. The accountants time appears to vary with the number of claims processed. Li Ming was able to separate the costs of processing claims from the costs of running the departments of accounting and human resources. He gathered the data on claims processing cost and the number of claims processed per month for the past 6 months. These data are as follows: Required: 1. Classify the claims processing costs that Li Ming identified as variable and fixed. 2. What is the independent variable? The dependent variable? 3. Use the high-low method to find the fixed cost per month and the variable rate. What is the cost formula? 4. CONCEPTUAL CONNECTION Suppose that an outside company bids on the claims processing business. The bid price is 4.60 per claim. If Tiffany expects 75,600 claims next year, should she outsource the claims processing or continue to do it in-house?arrow_forwardVariable-Costing and Absorption-Costing Income Borques Company produces and sells wooden pallets that are used for moving and stacking materials. The operating costs for the past year were as follows: During the year, Borques produced 200,000 wooden pallets and sold 204,300 at 9 each. Borques had 8,200 pallets in beginning finished goods inventory; costs have not changed from last year to this year. An actual costing system is used for product costing. Required: 1. What is the per-unit inventory cost that is acceptable for reporting on Borquess balance sheet at the end of the year ? How many units are in ending inventory? What is the total cost of ending inventory? 2. Calculate absorption-costing operating income. 3. CONCEPTUAL CONNECTION What would the per-unit inventory cost be under variable costing? Does this differ from the unit cost computed in Requirement 1? Why? 4. Calculate variable-costing operating income. 5. Suppose that Borques Company had sold 196,700 pallets during the year. What would absorption-costing operating income have been? Variable-costing operating income?arrow_forwardSegment variable costing income statement and effect on operating income of change in operations Valdespin Company manufactures three sizes of camping tentssmall (S), medium (M), and large (L). The income statement has consistently indicated a net loss for the M size, and management is considering three proposals: (1) continue Size M, (2) discontinue Size M and reduce total output accordingly, or (3) discontinue Size M and conduct an advertising campaign to expand the sales of Size S so that the entire plant capacity can continue to be used. If Proposal 2 is selected and Size M is discontinued and production curtailed, the annual fixed production costs and fixed operating expenses could be reduced by 46,080 and 32,240, respectively. If Proposal 3 is selected, it is anticipated that an additional annual expenditure of 34,560 for the rental of additional warehouse space would yield an additional 130% in Size S sales volume. It is also assumed that the increased production of Size S would utilize the plant facilities released by the discontinuance of Size M. The sales and costs have been relatively stable over the past few years, and they are expected to remain so for the foreseeable future. The income statement for the past year ended June 30, 20Y9, is as follows: Instructions 1. Prepare an income statement for the past year in the variable costing format. Use the following headings: Data for each size should be reported through contribution margin. The fixed costs should be deducted from the total contribution margin, as reported in the Total column, to determine operating income. 2. Based on the income statement prepared in (1) and the other data presented, determine the amount by which total annual operating income would be reduced below its present level if Proposal 2 is accepted. 3. Prepare an income statement in the variable costing format, indicating the projected annual operating income if Proposal 3 is accepted. Use the following headings: Data for each style should be reported through contribution margin. The fixed costs should be deducted from the total contribution margin as reported in the Total column. For purposes of this problem, the expenditure of 34,560 for the rental of additional warehouse space can be added to the fixed operating expenses. 4. By how much would total annual operating income increase above its present level if Proposal 3 is accepted? Explain.arrow_forward
- Variable and Fixed Costs What follows are a number of resources that are used by a manufacturer of futons. Assume that the output measure or cost driver is the number of futons produced. All direct labor is paid on an hourly basis, and hours worked can be easily changed by management. All other factory workers are salaried. a. Power to operate a drill (to drill holes in the wooden frames of the futons) b. Cloth to cover the futon mattress c. Salary of the factory receptionist d. Cost of food and decorations for the annual Fourth of July party for all factory employees e. Fuel for a forklift used to move materials in a factory f. Depreciation on the factory g. Depreciation on a forklift used to move partially completed goods h. Wages paid to workers who assemble the futon frame i. Wages paid to workers who maintain the factory equipment j. Cloth rags used to wipe the excess stain off the wooden frames Required: Classify the resource costs as variable or fixed.arrow_forwardProduction run size and activity improvement Littlejohn, Inc., manufactures machined parts for the automotive industry. The activity cost associated with Part XX-10 is as follows: Each unit requires 30 minutes of fabrication direct labor. Moreover, Part XX-10 is manufactured in production run sizes of 50 units. Each production run is set up, scheduled (production control), and moved as a batch of 50 units. Management is considering improvements in the setup, production control, and moving activities in order to cut the production run sizes by half. As a result, the number of setups, production runs, and moves will double from 10 to 20. Such improvements are expected to speed the companys ability to respond to customer orders. Setup is reengineered so that it takes 60% of the original cost per setup. Production control software will allow production control effort and cost per production run to decline by 60%. Moving distance was reduced by 40%, thus reducing the cost per move by the same amount. A. Determine the revised activity cost per unit under the proposed changes. B. Did these improvements reduce the activity cost per unit? C. What cost per unit for setup would be required for the solution in (a) to equal the base solution?arrow_forward
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