Assignment: Variance in Decision Making

Assignment: Variance in Decision Making

Question Description
Assignment: Using Variance Analysis in Decision Making
Having a budget is critical for the financial stability of an organization. Keeping track of how well the organization is actually adhering to the budget, and subsequent identification of why the budget numbers are being missed is equally important. Without this critical “why” piece, it is difficult to make the necessary adjustments to the budget or to organizational behavior that might be promoting overspending.

A good budget is built with thoughtful consideration of future costs and revenue. Though your budget is formulated with expected figures in mind, the actual resulting values may vary considerably. This variance–from projected to actual–can be a pleasant surprise or a fiscal nightmare and can make financial decision making difficult. Fortunately, variance analysis can enable management to determine why variance occurred and what can be done to mitigate its effects.

For those not comfortable with the use of Microsoft Excel, this week’s Optional Resources suggest several tutorials.

To prepare:

Review the information in this week’s Learning Resources dealing with variance analysis, how it is calculated, and how it can be used in decision making.
View the video Week 8 Application Assignment Tutorial: Variance Analysis, provided in this week’s Learning Resources.
Use the Week 8 Application Assignment Template, provided in this week’s Learning Resources, to complete this assignment. Carefully examine the information in each of the scenarios and provide the necessary calculations. Using this information will help you answer the questions.
BY DAY 7
Note: For those Assignments in this course that require you to perform calculations you must:
Use the Excel spreadsheet template for the Week 8 assignment
Show all your calculations and formulas in the spreadsheet.
Answer any questions included with the problems (as text in the Excel spreadsheet).
A title and reference page are NOT needed in this assignment. Put your name and assignment at the top of the Excel spreadsheet.

Use the Week 8 Application Assignment Template for the Week 8 assignment

SALARY VARIANCE SCENARIO
For this Assignment run a variance analysis. Based on the information you obtain: assess the results of the analysis, suggest potential causes of the budget variances and an explanation for addressing the situation.

Using the following performance data calculate the volume adjusted labor rate variance and volume adjusted efficiency variance. Your Variable Expense Factor is 40% and your Volume Change Factor is 50%.

Note: Submit the Excel spreadsheet containing your Salary Variance Scenario calculations to the Assignment submission link

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.