Final Accounting

The main reason behind it is that the variance analysis of materials, labor, and overhead indicates the difference between original budget and actual sales/amount. It explains that the management should make changes in the budgets in order to diminish the chances of failure (Epstein & Jermakowicz, 2010). Moreover, the company should make changes in its all budgets like production budget, sales budget, manufacturing budget, selling budget and general & administrative. These changes would be helpful to reduce the difference between the actual and projected sales of the firm.

Use of the flexible budget shows the budgeted operating income given the actual sales. When you compare the flexible budget to the actual budget you are able to compare the total sales and cost incurred given the same units sold. The sales price variance, which is the actual sales less the flexible budgeted sales, was $14,700 favorable. This means that actual sales were higher than budgeted sales at that usage. This is attributable to the increase in service price from $25 to $26.40. Price variance for material usage was $2,100 over the flexible budget projection. This could be attributed to overuse or waste of materials. As expected, the direct labor price variance was $3,375 lower than the flexible budget amount. This is attributed to the manager’s effective use of labor. Operating expenses were also higher than the flexible budget

Semi-fixed, where costs are fixed for a given level of activity but change in steps when activity levels exceed or fall below these given levels.

The projected costs in the last six months of 2004 (column 4) are calculated by subtracting the actual costs for the first five months of 2004 (column 2) from 2004’s projected total costs (column 3). This gives us the projected costs for the last seven months of 2004. However, we are only interested in the last six months of 2004, so

|2.2 Explain the purpose of using estimations when developing a budget and ways of doing so |Question 2 Page 3 |

While it is true that Ms. Forthright had always exceeded her budgeted sales, the extent to which she diverts away from the managers projections does not necessarily means that she is violating honesty and integrity. Her decision on what her budgeted sales for the year is highly relevant to the data available to her. Her projections tends to lie between the field manager and the marketing manager’s predictions, which can be reasonable because in the past years, the field manager’s projections tend to be over what the actual sales of the year will be.

With the increasing ramification of economic changes and complex business functioning, each and every company has to implement budget variance analysis to identify the fluctuation in projected amount. In this report, Peyton Approved Company has been taken into consideration to evaluate the effectiveness of business functioning and plant’s operation in determined approach. It reviews the efficiencies and effectiveness of their plant’s operations. With the help of budget variance, it could be easily determined whether Peyton Approved Company has been performing its business throughout the time. Budget variance is the technique which is used by Peyton Approved Company to identify the fluctuation and variability in the set budget and implemented project. Budget variance is defined as differences between the actual amounts of expense incurred by Peyton Approved Company. It is evaluated that when Peyton Approved Company has positive cash flow in its planned budget. For instance, if amount of expenses incurred by company is less than its planned or estimated budget expenses then company has positive budget variance and vice-versa. This could be defined with the estimation of cost budget variance. The formula for the same has been given as below (Steffan, 2008).

Planning is a function that is employed by every organization in projecting the future outcome of the firm. Successful firms achieve their goals through the use of different types of budgets. These budgets include, production budget, sales budget, labor budget and expenses budget. These budgets also show the targets that should be achieved by the firm within the budgeted time plan.

Another concern identified, is the utilities expense budget for utilities in Year 9 which is $150,000. This amount is identified as a fixed amount and is unrelated to actually production activities and manufacturing efficiency. Considering that production levels and activity fluctuates throughout the year, the budget for utilities should be a variable item. An example; from Year 7 to Year 8, the utilities expenses increase by $15,000 and with this detection, ways to reduce this expense should be investigate. Another concern is a duplicated line item under the Selling, General, and Administrative Budget for Utilities and Utilities and Services. Another issue for concern, Total Variable Cost was reported to be lower; however was not enough for the lack of sales combined with an increase in advertising and transportation which resulted in an overall negative result. The low Net Sales directly impacted the Contribution Margin which decreased by $49,397. Overall, these concerns indicate the need for a flexible budget with variance analysis.

If the budget for a line-item is $1,000 and 10% is assigned to a particular function (such as General Program), then if an additional 6% is added to that function (due to 3 new projects with 2% per new project) the new budget for that function is [10% + (3 x 2%)] multiplied by the original budget for that line item. In this case, .16 x $1,000 = $160 while the budget for the entire line-item is $1,000 x 1.06 = $1,060.

This is the static budget number for variable costs (feedstocks, chemicals, energy). Since it is the static budget, it is based on the original, projected level of sales. From Exhibit 1, the projected level of sales was 33,000 tons.

Based on the master budget, there have something wrong and unclear. All the numbers are the same, evenly quarter two have more sale than other quarter, at least less 30% than quarter two. We can easy to recognize with a few changes and we can achieve a goal $1.000.000

Overhead costs include rent, office staff, depreciation, and other. Once the flexible budget was complete, variances between the actual and flexible budget could be calculated (Exhibit B). The variance for frame assembly was favorable with actual costs being $82,663 less than in the flexible budget. The variances for wheel and final assembly however were both unfavorable. Wheel assembly had an unfavorable variance of $50,650, while final assembly variance was the highest at an unfavorable variance of $231,200. Taking into account these three aspects of direct cost, direct cost has an unfavorable variance $199,187. Although most overhead costs are fixed, 2/3 of other costs are variable and increase with the increased production. As shown in Exhibit B, overhead variance is unfavorable at $60,000. The direct cost variance and overhead variable together lead to a total unfavorable variance of $259,187.

How can the total flexible-budget variance be broken down (i.e., what are the constituent parts of this total variance)?

Planning system weaknesses: To begin with, fundamental assumptions, such as new plants, inventory carryovers, packaging trends, etc., which are used for initial sales forecast, are entirely made by corporate headquarters. However, the divisional managers assume full responsibility for the estimates they submitted to the corporate head office. As a result, they have to make efforts to increase the overall accuracy of forecast and avoid making changes in subsequent reviews of the budget. Moreover, each product line uses the same forecasting method. It is ineffective for the company to make accurate budget since factors affecting each product line are different, such as industry trends, customer preferences and so on. Lastly, instead of plant managers, the district sale managers raise the sales budgets. However, the plant managers are held accountable for this budgeted profit number, which is connected with their performance and is not controlled by them.