Question

When XYZ management met to review the year-end financial statements, the room was filled with excitement. Sales had been exceptional during the year and every department had exceeded the budget and last year’s sales totals. Several years ago Waterways had implemented a bonus system based on percentage of sales over budget, and the managers were expecting healthy cheques at the end of the year. Yet the plant manager, Ryan Smith, was stunned into silence when he read the bottom line on the income statement for manufacturing operations. It was showing a loss! He immediately approached the CFO asking for an explanation. Ryan wondered, “Why did we go through all that trouble and inconvenience to adopt those cost-cutting measures when they had the opposite effect?” One of those measures was to move toward lean manufacturing. The CFO retrieved the following information with respect to the top-selling line from the manufacturing operations for the last three years. Production on this line began on January 1, 2014: 2014 2015 2016 Beginning inventory of finished units 0 Production in units 60,000 76,000 45,600 Sales in units 53,000 66,000 62,600 Selling price $40 $40 $42 Direct material $4 $4 $5 Direct labour 5 5 6 Variable manufacturing overhead 5 5 5 Variable selling and administration 6 6 6 Fixed manufacturing overhead 456,000 456,000 456,000 Fixed selling and administration 140,000 140,000 140,000 Waterways uses the absorption-costing method and accounts for inventory using FIFO.

Assume that XYZ uses a normal-costing method. The company had budgeted 60,000 units of production for each of the three years.

Calculate the volume variance for each year(2014, 2015 & 2016) indicating if it is favourable,unfavourable or neither

                                                        2014                                                   2015                                                         2016

volume variance                            $___________(fav, unfav or neither)   $___________(fav, unfav or neither)    $___ fav/unf/or neither

Answer 1