Chart Hills Company makes customized golf shirts for sale to golf courses. Each shirt requires three hours to produce because of the customized logo for each golf course. Chart Hills uses direct labour hours to allocate the overhead cost to production. Fixed overhead costs, including rent, depreciation, supervisory salaries, and other production expenses, are budgeted at $28,500 per month. The facility currently used is large enough to produce 5,000 shirts per month. During March, Chart Hills produced 4,200 shirts and actual fixed costs were $28,000.

Required

1. Your calculations of the fixed overhead spending variance and indicate whether it is favourable (F) or unfavourable (U).

2. Your calculations of the production-volume variance assume that Chart Hills uses direct labour hours available at capacity to calculate the budgeted fixed overhead rate. Indicate whether it is favourable (F) or unfavourable (U).

3. An unfavourable production-volume variance could be interpreted as the economic cost of unused capacity. Provide your comment on why Chart Hills would be willing to incur this cost.

4. Assume that Chart Hills' budgeted variable cost per unit is $18, and it expects to sell its shirts for $35 apiece. Provide your calculation on the sales-volume variance and reconcile it with the production-volume variance calculated in requirement 2. Provide your comment on what this concept measures.