Question

You have just been hired by FAB Corporation, the manufacturer of a revolutionary new garage door opening device. The president has asked that you review the company’s costing system and “do what you can to help us get better control of our manufacturing overhead costs.” You find that the company has never used a flexible budget, and you suggest that preparing such a budget would be an excellent first step in overhead planning and control.

After much effort and analysis, you determined the following cost formulas and gathered the following actual cost data for March:

	Cost Formula	Actual Cost in March
Utilities	$16,500 plus $0.20 per machine-hour	$	22,300
Maintenance	$38,300 plus $1.90 per machine-hour	$	70,100
Supplies	$0.60 per machine-hour	$	11,800
Indirect labor	$94,500 plus $1.80 per machine-hour	$	131,400
Depreciation	$67,700	$	69,400

During March, the company worked 18,000 machine-hours and produced 12,000 units. The company had originally planned to work 20,000 machine-hours during March.

Required:

1. Calculate the activity variances for March.

2. Calculate the spending variances for March.

Answer 1

Activity variance :

Utilities (18000-20000)*0.20	400 F
Maintenance  (18000-20000)*1.9	3800 F
Supplies  (18000-20000)*0.60	1200 F
Indirect labour  (18000-20000)*1.8	3600 F
Depreciation	0 None
Total	9000 F

Spending variance :

Utilities (18000*0.20+16500)-22300	2200 U
Maintenance  (18000*1.90+38300)-70100	2400 F
Supplies  (18000*.60-11800)	1000 U
Indirect labour  (18000*1.80+94500-131400)	4500 U
Depreciation (67700-69400)	1700 U
Total	7000 U