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Cost Accounting: What is Variance Analysis? 3 Views
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Description:
What is Variance Analysis? Variance analysis is the difference between what a company plans and what actually happens, in a monetary sense. So, if they planned on spending x amount and they actually spent y, variance analysis would show a difference of x minus y.
Transcript
- 00:00
And finance Allah shmoop What is variants Analysis Well basically
- 00:07
it's the fancy business Way to ask Why didn't things
- 00:10
go as expected Or how on Earth are we so
- 00:14
far off Plan plan is the key word You made
- 00:17
a plan a k a Budget Others in the company
Full Transcript
- 00:19
rely in your planning and budgeting You know from the
- 00:22
hiring needs of the union factory workers this year to
- 00:25
the marketing spend for TV ads from that department to
- 00:28
the legal team who's fully plumbed up for the eleven
- 00:31
point three lawsuits you expected you'd have to defend this
- 00:34
year But then real life happened and things didn't quite
- 00:37
go as you expected What happened Well they'll figure it
- 00:40
out You're going to use variance analysis And yes it's
- 00:43
a whole science unto itself You own zesty kitty a
- 00:47
leading provider of condiments for pet food You launch a
- 00:50
new Suraj based sauce meant to pair perfectly with the
- 00:54
frozen mice that people feed to there Pet snakes It's
- 00:58
called spicy serpent surprise and cats love it As much
- 01:02
as I know a cat can love anything based on
- 01:04
market research and projections derived from other products you already
- 01:08
sell while you expect sales of three hundred thousand dollars
- 01:11
in the first month and you expect contributed profits from
- 01:14
this product to be one hundred twenty five grand giving
- 01:16
you a contribution margin of about forty two percent Well
- 01:19
a month after launch you look at the numbers you
- 01:21
brought in revenues of four hundred thousand dollars way better
- 01:24
than expected However profits and margins fell meaningful E short
- 01:28
of projections You only brought in one hundred thousand dollars
- 01:31
in contributed profits A contribution margin of just twenty five
- 01:34
percent Well shy of the budgeted forty two percent So
- 01:37
w t f baby Well you run some variance analysis
- 01:41
And as it turns out you had unexpected demand from
- 01:43
Ireland You were pretty sure you'd heard they didn't have
- 01:46
anything left there but oh well additional demand is usually
- 01:50
a good surprise Right That drove your four hundred thousand
- 01:53
over the much less revenue that you originally thought But
- 01:56
the extra demand meant you had to scramble to make
- 01:58
enough spicy serpents Surprised to feel all the orders Well
- 02:01
to do this you had to pay overtime to your
- 02:04
union workers in order to crank out the extra sauce
- 02:07
And that was expensive Now that you know what happened
- 02:10
you can well kind of adjust You know the extra
- 02:12
demand is there so you can hire some additional workers
- 02:15
carefully These new employees will get regular pay and the
- 02:18
additional capacity means you won't have to pay anybody usurious
- 02:21
overtime Since you're not paying the extra labor costs associated
- 02:25
with the overtime well margins will return to the expected
- 02:28
levels Meanwhile you adjust your revenue projections to the new
- 02:31
levels The added demand is still going to be there
- 02:34
next month so you revise your expectations You're going to
- 02:37
make them higher revenues go up So for the second
- 02:39
month you expect to repeat four hundred thousand dollars in
- 02:41
revenue However your labor adjustment should allow margins to get
- 02:45
closer to the originally expected forty two percent which would
- 02:48
give you contribution profits of about one hundred sixty eight
- 02:51
grand Right Well once the month is over you'll look
- 02:53
at the numbers and see if anything else doesn't match
- 02:55
the new budgeted expectations Then you'll run the variance analysis
- 02:59
process again and it becomes part of an ongoing cycle
- 03:01
Basically checking budgets against projections against riel Life results well
- 03:06
When the process is done you'll know whether your projections
- 03:08
were just wrong and need to be adjusted You know
- 03:11
like with the unexpected Irish demand for your new mouse
- 03:14
sauce or you'll find points in the production process and
- 03:17
distribution process and marketing process where your costs went awry
- 03:21
like they were too expensive to get Your stuff shipped
- 03:23
are marketed or placed or put on shelves or whatever
- 03:26
was needed and then you'll adjust You can implement changes
- 03:29
here to get things back to what you predicted Like
- 03:31
when you figured out how the overtime hurt your profit
- 03:34
margins and you brought in new workers overseas likely to
- 03:37
fix the unnecessarily high labor costs Well now thatyou're Suraj
- 03:41
a mouse sauce has taken off You can start your
- 03:43
RND department working on its next big project soy sauce
- 03:47
flavored insects for pets Spiders who
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