Gold Nest Company of Guandong, China, is a family-owned enterprise that makes birdcages for the South China market. The company sells its birdcages through an extensive network of street vendors who receive commissions on their sales. All of the company?s transactions with customers, employees, and suppliers are conducted in cash; there is no credit.

The company uses a job-order costing system in which overhead is applied to jobs on the basis of direct labor cost. Its predetermined overhead rate is based on a cost formula that estimated $95,000 of manufacturing overhead for an estimated activity level of $50,000 direct labor dollars. At the beginning of the year, the inventory balances were as follows: