The cheque$-$clearing office of Pay Loans Company is responsible for processing all cheques that come to the company for payment. Managers at the company believe that variable overhead costs are essentially proportional to the number of labour$-$hours worked in the office, so labour$-$hours are used as the activity base when preparing variable overhead budgets and performance reports. Data for October, the most recent month, appear below:

Budgeted labour$-$hours $1,450$

Actual labour$-$hours $1,345$

Standard labour$-$hours allowed for the actual number of cheques processed $1,470$