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	$16,900 plus $0.21 per machine-hour	$	22,270
Maintenance	$38,400 plus $1.20 per machine-hour	$	52,600
Supplies	$0.60 per machine-hour	$	10,000
Indirect labor	$94,600 plus $1.30 per machine-hour	$	117,600
Depreciation	$68,500	$	70,200

During March, the company worked 15,000 machine-hours and produced 9,000 units. The company had originally planned to work 17,000 machine-hours during March.

Required:

1. Calculate the activity variances for March.

2. Calculate the spending variances for March.

Answer 1

1. & 2.

Compute the activity and spending variances as follows:

Above figures have been calculated in the following manner: