Part A: What is the accountant's estimate of total "overhead" next month if she uses the cost function based on her analysis of last month's cost data?

Part B: What is the accountant's estimate of total "overhead" next month if she uses the cost function based on the high-low method?

Their approach has proven successful, but competition is getting much stiffer, and Charlene is concerned that her approach to determining costs and prices for any particular job is not correctly incorporating all of the company's costs. She has heard about the concept of cost allocation and asks her accountant to create an allocation system for the business. Her accountant decides to implement a single-driver allocation system and needs to develop a reliable cost function to estimate total indirect costs. She will use this estimate for the numerator of the single driver overhead" rate, and she will use service hours as the cost driver and denominator in the "overhead" rate To estimate the parameters of this cost function, the accountant first studied the behavior of last month's costs, when the company spent 304 service hours repairing 45 computer systems. Here are the results of her analysis Cost Item Utilities Office rent Administration Supplies Training Fixed Cost $239 $3,509 $3,475 50 $342 $7,565 Variable Cost $150 $0 $215 $3,158 $301 $3,824 Total Concerned that last month may not have been a typical month and her breakdown of fixed and variable costs not completely correct, the accountant decided to use the high-low method to create another cost function. She gathered individual cost and service hour data from the last six months; the following were for the two months when costs and service hours were the lowest and the highest Cost Item Utilities Office rent Administration Supplies Training low month $224 $3,000 $3,137 $1,410 $611 $8,382 235 29 high month $306 $3,000 $3,521 $3,514 $751 $11,092 553 71 Total Service hours Next month, Charlene expects the company to spend 400 hours solving clients' computer system problems