Question Tag: Direct Materials

Mercury Company’s management wants to prepare budgets for one of its products, TomaCan, for October 2019.

The firm sells the product for GH¢75 per unit and has the following expected sales (in units) for these months in 2019:

The production process requires 5 kilos of Atadwe and 3 kilos of Ginger. The firm’s policy is to maintain an ending finished goods inventory each month equal to 15% of the following month’s budgeted sales, but in no case less than 1,300 units. All materials inventories are to be maintained at 10% of the production needs for the next month, but not to exceed 3,000 kilos. The firm expects all inventories at the end of September to be within the guidelines. The purchase department expects the materials to cost GH¢1.75 per kilo for Ginger and GH¢5.00 per kilo for Atadwe respectively.

The production process requires direct labor at two Skill Levels (SL). The rate for labor at SL1 is GH¢45 per hour, and for SL2 is GH¢25 per hour. SL1 can process one batch of TomaCan per hour, while SL2 uses double the time of SL1 for the same output. Each batch consists of 10 units.

Variable manufacturing overhead is GH¢100 per batch plus GH¢75 per direct labor-hour. Fixed production overhead is GH¢51,240. It is the plan of Mercury Company to spend a third of variable and fixed production overhead costs on selling and administration expenses. The company is in the 25% tax bracket but enjoys a rebate of 50% because of its location. The company uses an actual cost system. The unit cost of production in October is the same as that of September.

Required: On the basis of the preceding data and projections, prepare the following budgets:

i) Production budget for October (in units).
ii) Direct materials purchases budget for October (in kilos).
iii) Direct materials purchases budget for October (in Cedis).
iv) Direct manufacturing labor budget for October (in Cedis).
v) Income statement for the month of October 2019.