Financial Versus Activity Flexible Budgeting

Kelly Gray, production manager, was upset with the latest performance report, which indicated that she was $100,000 over budget. Given the efforts that she and her workers had made, she was confident that they had met or beat the budget. Now, she was not only upset but also genuinely puzzled over the results. Three itemsdirect labor, power, and setupswere over budget. The actual costs for these three items follow:

	Actual Costs
Direct labor	$209,030
Power	125,900
Setups	140,600
Total	$475,530

Kelly knew that her operation had produced more units than originally had been budgeted, so more power and labor had naturally been used. She also knew that the uncertainty in scheduling had led to more setups than planned. When she pointed this out to John Huang, the controller, he assured her that the budgeted costs had been adjusted for the increase in productive activity. Curious, Kelly questioned John about the methods used to make the adjustment.

JOHN: If the actual level of activity differs from the original planned level, we adjust the budget by using budget formulasformulas that allow us to predict what the costs will be for different levels of activity.

KELLY: The approach sounds reasonable. However, I'm sure something is wrong here. Tell me exactly how you adjusted the costs of labor, power, and setups.

JOHN: First, we obtain formulas for the individual items in the budget by using the method of least squares. We assume that cost variations can be explained by variations in productive activity where activity is measured by direct labor hours. Here is a list of the cost formulas for the three items you mentioned. The variable X is the number of direct labor hours:

Labor cost	=	$10X
Power cost	=	$5,130 + $4.1X
Setup cost	=	$95,300

KELLY: I think I see the problem. Power costs don't have a lot to do with direct labor hours. They have more to do with machine hours. As production increases, machine hours increase more rapidly than direct labor hours. Also,

JOHN: You know, you have a point. The coefficient of determination for power cost is only about 50 percent. That leaves a lot of unexplained cost variation. The coefficient for labor, however, is much betterit explains about 96 percent of the cost variation. Setup costs, of course, are fixed.

KELLY: Well, as I was about to say, setup costs also have very little to do with direct labor hours. And I might add that they certainly are not fixedat least not all of them. We had to do more setups than our original plan called for because of the scheduling changes. And we have to pay our people when they work extra hours. It seems as if we are always paying overtime. I wonder if we simply do not have enough people for the setup activity. Supplies are used for each setup, and these are not cheap. Did you build these extra costs of increased setup activity into your budget?

JOHN: No, we assumed that setup costs were fixed. I see now that some of them could vary as the number of setups increases. Kelly, let me see if I can develop some cost formulas based on better explanatory variables. I'll get back with you in a few days.

Assume that after a few days' work, John developed the following cost formulas, all with a coefficient of determination greater than 90 percent:

Labor cost	=	$10X; where X = Direct labor hours
Power cost	=	$67,500 + 0.80Y; where Y = Machine hours
Setup cost	=	$98,270 + $399Z; where Z = Number of setups

The actual measures of each of the activity drivers are as follows:

Direct labor hours	20,100
Machine hours	90,000
Number of setups	110

Required:

1. Prepare a performance report for direct labor, power, and setups using the direct-labor-based formulas.

Performance Report
	Actual Costs	Budgeted Costs	Budget Variance	Favorable (F) or Unfavorable (U)
Direct labor	$fill in the blank ddf8f20b2050f85_2	$fill in the blank ddf8f20b2050f85_3	$fill in the blank ddf8f20b2050f85_4	Unfavorable
Power	fill in the blank ddf8f20b2050f85_7	fill in the blank ddf8f20b2050f85_8	fill in the blank ddf8f20b2050f85_9	Unfavorable
Setups	fill in the blank ddf8f20b2050f85_12	fill in the blank ddf8f20b2050f85_13	fill in the blank ddf8f20b2050f85_14	Unfavorable
Total	$fill in the blank ddf8f20b2050f85_16	$fill in the blank ddf8f20b2050f85_17	$fill in the blank ddf8f20b2050f85_18	Unfavorable

Feedback

1. Review what you have learned in the chapter.

2. Prepare a performance report for direct labor, power, and setups using the multiple cost driver formulas that John developed.

Performance Report
	Actual Costs	Budgeted Costs	Budget Variance	Favorable (F) or Unfavorable (U)
Direct labor	$fill in the blank 5d6ef4fe2fc906b_2	$fill in the blank 5d6ef4fe2fc906b_3	$fill in the blank 5d6ef4fe2fc906b_4	Unfavorable
Power	fill in the blank 5d6ef4fe2fc906b_7	fill in the blank 5d6ef4fe2fc906b_8	fill in the blank 5d6ef4fe2fc906b_9	Favorable
Setups	fill in the blank 5d6ef4fe2fc906b_12	fill in the blank 5d6ef4fe2fc906b_13	fill in the blank 5d6ef4fe2fc906b_14	Favorable
Total	$fill in the blank 5d6ef4fe2fc906b_16	$fill in the blank 5d6ef4fe2fc906b_17	$fill in the blank 5d6ef4fe2fc906b_18	Favorable

Feedback

2. Review what you have learned in the chapter.

3. Of the two approaches, which provides the most accurate picture of Kelly's performance? Multiple cost driver approach

4. After reviewing the approach to performance measurement, a consultant remarked that non-value-added cost trend reports would be a much better performance measurement approach than comparing actual costs with budgeted costseven if activity flexible budgets were used. Do you agree or disagree? Agree