Computing variances for marketing costs. Hoyt's Telemarketing, Inc., uses telephone solicitation to sell products. The company has set standards that call for $450 of sales per hour of telephone time. Telephone solicitors receive a commission of 10 percent of dollar sales. The firm expects other variable costs, including costs of sales in the operation, to be 45 percent of sales revenue. It budgets fixed costs at $411,500 per month. The firm computes the number of sales hours per month based on the number of days in a month minus an allowance for idle time, scheduling, and other inefficiencies. This month the firm expected 180 hours of telephone calling time for each of 40 callers.
During the month, the firm earned $2,700,000 of revenues. Marketing and admin- istrative cost data for the period follow:
| |
Actual |
Master Budget |
|
Cost of Sales
|
$810,000
|
$972,000
|
|
Telephone Time Charges
|
32,200
|
32,400
|
|
Delivery Services
|
161,100
|
194,400
|
|
Uncollectable Accounts
|
121,500
|
145,800
|
|
Other Variable Costs
|
112,700
|
113,400
|
|
Fixed Costs
|
409,000
|
411,500
|
Using sales dollars as a basis for analysis, compute the variances between actual, flexible budget, and master budget for all costs including cost of sales. (Hint: Consider sales volume as an output measure.)