Question

In order to complete your case analysis successfully, you must

• identify the role you are playing,
• assess user needs
• analyze user needs or issues (qualitatively and quantitatively), and
• provide a recommendation and conclusion.

An average grade will result from answering all questions with basic coverage and accuracy, showing all your work. Additional points come from including greater detail, astute, informed commentary where appropriate and connections to readings and other content.

Case: Cost System Considerations for CANADA SNOWCONES LTD.

Canada Snowcones Ltd. (CSL) owned and operated 20 retail frozen yogurt stores spread throughout Southern Ontario, from Toronto to Windsor. CSL's stores sold only high quality, premium frozen yogurt. They offered an assortment of 35 different frozen yogurt flavours. A significant amount of the CSL flavours were special, such as "Peanut Butter Bacon", "Charcoal-Sushi", and "Tropical Cheese Sensations". However, CSL also sold a few of the classic frozen yogurt flavours, such as vanilla, milk chocolate, mint, and other singular fruit flavours. While some of the flavours were very popular, there were also some of the more peculiar flavours that had low total sales in terms of units.

CSL produced its own frozen yogurt. The founder of the company, Samantha Reynolds, had originally made the yogurt in her basement. But eventual growing demand led to Samantha renting part of factory for CSL's production. As CSL grew, Samantha was able to afford automated but more costly production equipment that blended the flavours and packaged the liquid frozen yogurt for freezing. CSL's most significant production costs were for raw materials, particularly yogurt, brown sugar, and the special flavour ingredients, and for the purchase, operation, and maintenance of production equipment.

All of CSL's products had the same retail price, as customers could choose or combine any flavours by scoops. Samantha set the prices to generate, on average, a markup of 100% on average full production costs. CSL's 2019 budget included manufacturing overhead (MOH) of $450,000. To estimate product costs, Samantha spread this MOH cost to products based on a proportion of the direct labour (DL) costs used in the production process. CSL's total DL costs for 2019 was $200,000, so Samantha charged the overhead to products at a rate of MOH to total DL costs.

Last week, Laura Horton, Samantha's babysitter for her daughter and the CEO of a large production firm, advised that Samantha's pricing strategy was not optimal. Laura's insight was that the expenses for producing CSL's numerous flavours were not uniform. She thought those inconsistencies should be reflected in the prices charged, or CSL's earnings would fluctuate as the combination of flavours sold varied.

Laura proposed that Samantha reestimate product costs using activity-based costing. She recommended that Samantha identify the major activities whose costs were included in the company's MOH costs. Then, she should apply these costs to products based on the products consumption of each of those activities. In response to Laura's suggestions, Samantha prepared the information presented below in Table 1.

Samantha decided to hire your consulting firm to help calculate the costs of two demonstrative flavours as an experiment to see if Laura's activity based costing system suggested produced any significant contrasts. She asked Laura to take her best estimate as to where she might find the most material differences, if any existed. After Samantha described the products to her, Laura suggested that she use Peanut Butter Bacon and Chocolate as the test product examples. Table 2 provides data relevant to the two selected products.

Table 1 Activity Purchasing Material Handling Mixing Chilling Packaging Quality Control Total MOH costs Canada Snowcones Ltd. - Budgeted MOH Costs Budgeted Cost (5000) Driver $ 60,000 Purchase Orders $ 71,250 Number of setups $ 91,500 Mixing hours $ 131,250 Chilling hours $ 82,500 Packaging machine hours $ 13,500 Number of batches $ 450,000 Budgeted Activity Level 829 1,766 920 1,856 1,020 205 Table 2 Canada Snowcones Ltd. - Two Product Examples Peanut Butter Bacon Direct Material (DM) $ 2.20 per gallon Direct Labour (DL) $ 1.40 per gallon Budgeted Production and sales 1,500 gallons Size of Batch 100 gallons Number of setups 3 per batch Size of Purchase Order 40 gallons Time in mixer 0.40 hour per 100 gallons Time in chiller 1.50 hour per 100 gallons Time in package machine 0.50 hour per 100 gallons Chocolate $ 1.90 per gallon $ 1.40 per gallon 80,000 gallons 4,000 gallons 3 per batch 500 gallons 0.20 hour per 100 gallons 1.50 hour per 100 gallons 0.25 hour per 100 gallons

Case Questions

1.      Utilizing the information above, calculate the full product cost (on a per gallon basis) of the Peanut Butter Bacon and Chocolate flavours utilizing:

a.      Samantha's more traditional costing system.

b.      Laura's suggestion to use activity-based costing.

2.      What are the impacts, if there is any at all, of switching CSL's costing method? In particular, are the any significant contrasts between traditional costing and activity-based costing in terms of:

a.      Their impact on costs for independent products.

b.      Their effect on CSL's total firm income? (assuming everything else remains the same, such as production and sales prices)

c.       If there are significant contrasts, why are they present? If there are no significant contrasts, why are they not present?

3.      What would you recommend to be Samantha's next step, based on this analysis? Explain.

Answer 1

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Part 1a
		Peanut	Chocolate
Direct Material		$                                            2.20	$                               1.90
Direct Labor		$                                            1.40	$                               1.40
Overheads	225% of Direct Labor	$                                            3.15	$                               3.15
$450,000/$200,000=225%
Product cost per gallon		$                                            6.75	$                               6.45
Part 1b
Activity	Budgeted Cost	Activity cost driver	Budgeted activity	Cost driver Rate
Purchasing	$                                 60,000	Purchase orders	829	$                       72.38
Material handling	$                                 71,250	Setups	1,766	$                       40.35
Mixing	$                                 91,500	Blender hrs	920	$                       99.46
Chilling	$                               131,250	Freezer hrs	1,856	$                       70.72
Packaging	$                                 82,500	Packaging machine hrs	1,020	$                       80.88
Quality control	$                                 13,500	Batches	206	$                       65.53
Total mfg OH cost	$                               450,000
		Peanut			Chocolate
Activity	Cost driver Rate	Calculation	Activity	Assigned Cost	Calculation	Activity	Assigned Cost
Purchasing	$                                   72.38	1,500/40	37.50	$                       2,714	80,000/500	160.00	$                11,580
Material handling	$                                   40.35	3*(1,500/100)	45.00	$                       1,816	3*(80,000/4,000)	60.00	$                  2,421
Mixing	$                                   99.46	0.40 Hour*1,500/100	6.00	$                          597	0.2 Hour*80,000/100	160.00	$                15,913
Chilling	$                                   70.72	1.5 Hour*1,500/100	22.50	$                       1,591	1.5 Hour*80,000/100	1,200.00	$                84,860
Packaging	$                                   80.88	0.5 Hour*1,500/100	7.50	$                          607	0.25 Hour*80,000/100	200.00	$                16,176
Quality control	$                                   65.53	1,500/100	15	$                          983	80,000/4,000	20.00	$                  1,311
Total mfg OH cost				$                       8,307			$             132,261
No of Units				1,500			80,000
Overhead Cost per unit				$                         5.54			$                    1.65
Direct Material				$                         2.20			$                    1.90
Direct Labor				$                         1.40			$                    1.40
Total Cost per unit				$                         9.14			$                    4.95
Part 2
Cost system designs have no effect on real product costs—whatever those real costs are is not affected by what the cost accountants are doing.
However, there is a material difference between the costs revealed by the two cost models
The new cost system is a better cost model. The differing cost effects of machine times and batch sizes are averaged out in the old system.
Until and unless operating decisions are changed, the effect on total company profits of switching to the new cost system would be zero
All the differences at the product level even out in the aggregate.
Part 3
With the new insights from a better cost system, Samantha might usefully take any of a number of actions, affecting such areas as
cost system design
Product Offering
Prices and Promotions
Manufacturing process