Hampton Chemical Specialties, Inc. (HCS) is a manufacturer of specialty chemicals sold to manufacturers, hospitals, and other users. HCS produces 10 to 15 million gallons of its main product HCS-22 each month. The data for July 2010 follows (in thousands of gallons). The chemical raw materials are added at the beginning of processing.

Beginning WIP inventory:
	Units (gallons)					200	gallons
	% complete with respect to materials					100%
	% complete with respect to conversion activity					60%
	materials content ($)					$55,000
	conversion costs ($)					$7,250
No. of units started into production during the period =						1,000	gallons
Good units completed (no spoilage)						800	gallons
Ending WIP inventory:
	Units (gallons)					400	gallons
	% complete with respect to materials					100%
	% complete with respect to conversion activity					30%
Current manufacturing costs incurred:
	materials					$176,000
	conversion costs					$66,900
No.of batches, July =						100
	no. of batches in process, end of July =					25
	no. of batches finished, in July					75
Batch-level portion of current conversion costs =						$28,500

Each month HCS averages 100 batches of product with approximately 12,000 gallons per batch, though some batches are as large as 50,000 gallons or more, and some are as small as a few hundred gallons. Also, the pattern of customer orders is that large orders come in at all times of the month, while small orders tend to cluster around the last few days of the month. The small orders are due to salespersons trying to meet monthly sales quotas and to the buying patterns of smaller customers who want their shipments early in the following month. As a result, in the average month three-fourths of the total orders are started in the last few days of the month, and most are not completed until early in the following month. For example, in July 2010, 100 batches were produced, and 75 were still in the ending work-in-process inventory at the end of the month. Ted Brown, plant controller for HCS, thinks that the current costing method, using weighted-average process costing, underestimates the cost of the ending work-in-process inventory as well as the cost of smaller jobs.

Required

1. Prepare the production cost report using the weighted-average method.

2. Assume that $28,500 of the $66,900 current conversion costs could be traced to batch-related activities such as equipment setup. Further, assume that these batch-related costs are all incurred when the batch is started. Ted has asked you to recalculate the production cost report to separate the batch-related costs from total conversion costs. How do the results differ from the method in requirement 1? Is Ted right about underestimating the cost of ending work-in-process inventory?