Allocation: Fixed and Variable Costs, Budgeted Fixed and Variable Costs

Biotechtron, Inc., has two research laboratories in the Southwest, one in Yuma, Arizona, and the other in Bernalillo, New Mexico. The owner of Biotechtron centralized the legal services function in the Yuma office and had both laboratories send any legal questions or issues to the Yuma office. The legal services support center has budgeted fixed costs of $170,000 per year and a budgeted variable rate of $67 per hour of professional time. The normal usage of the legal services center is 2,580 hours per year for the Yuma office and 1,720 hours per year for the Bernalillo office. This corresponds to the expected usage for the coming year.

1. Determine the amount of legal services support center costs that should be assigned to each office. In your computations, carry ratio values out to two decimal places. Round your final answers to the nearest dollar if rounding is required.

Yuma
Bernalillo

2. Since the offices produce services, not tangible products, what purpose is served by allocating the budgeted costs?

It allows service department costs to be applied to the ending inventories and to the cost of goods sold.

It serves no purpose since service department costs are not product costs and are not applied to inventories the cost of goods sold.

It serves the same purposes as costing out tangible products (e.g., pricing, profitability analysis, and performance evaluation).

3. Now, assume that during the year, the legal services center incurred actual fixed costs of $173,600 and actual variable costs of $245,350. It delivered 3,650 hours of professional time2,220 hours to Yuma and 1,430 hours to Bernalillo.

Determine the amount of the legal services center's costs that should be allocated to each office.

Yuma
Bernalillo

4. Did the costs allocated differ from the costs incurred by the legal services center? If so why?

Because both labs operated inefficiently

Because initial budget assumptions were incorrect

Because the labs were charged based on budgeted costs

Because the unit variable costs changed

No reason, as there was no change