Gap Analysis

  

Categories: Accounting, Banking

The New Year is right around the corner, and you are making resolutions to work out more, read more, save more money, spend more time with friends, etc. You analyze the current state of your life and finances, and see a gap somewhere between where you are and where you want to be. So you come up with a resolution and steps to meet your goal within the next year.

This analysis enables you to see where the gaps are in your life, and find solutions to fill those gaps.

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Cost Accounting: What is Variance Analys...3 Views

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And finance Allah shmoop What is variants Analysis Well basically

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it's the fancy business Way to ask Why didn't things

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go as expected Or how on Earth are we so

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far off Plan plan is the key word You made

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a plan a k a Budget Others in the company

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rely in your planning and budgeting You know from the

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hiring needs of the union factory workers this year to

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the marketing spend for TV ads from that department to

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the legal team who's fully plumbed up for the eleven

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point three lawsuits you expected you'd have to defend this

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year But then real life happened and things didn't quite

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go as you expected What happened Well they'll figure it

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out You're going to use variance analysis And yes it's

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a whole science unto itself You own zesty kitty a

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leading provider of condiments for pet food You launch a

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new Suraj based sauce meant to pair perfectly with the

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frozen mice that people feed to there Pet snakes It's

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called spicy serpent surprise and cats love it As much

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as I know a cat can love anything based on

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market research and projections derived from other products you already

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sell while you expect sales of three hundred thousand dollars

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in the first month and you expect contributed profits from

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this product to be one hundred twenty five grand giving

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you a contribution margin of about forty two percent Well

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a month after launch you look at the numbers you

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brought in revenues of four hundred thousand dollars way better

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than expected However profits and margins fell meaningful E short

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of projections You only brought in one hundred thousand dollars

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in contributed profits A contribution margin of just twenty five

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percent Well shy of the budgeted forty two percent So

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w t f baby Well you run some variance analysis

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And as it turns out you had unexpected demand from

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Ireland You were pretty sure you'd heard they didn't have

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anything left there but oh well additional demand is usually

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a good surprise Right That drove your four hundred thousand

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over the much less revenue that you originally thought But

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the extra demand meant you had to scramble to make

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enough spicy serpents Surprised to feel all the orders Well

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to do this you had to pay overtime to your

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union workers in order to crank out the extra sauce

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And that was expensive Now that you know what happened

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you can well kind of adjust You know the extra

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demand is there so you can hire some additional workers

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carefully These new employees will get regular pay and the

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additional capacity means you won't have to pay anybody usurious

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overtime Since you're not paying the extra labor costs associated

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with the overtime well margins will return to the expected

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levels Meanwhile you adjust your revenue projections to the new

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levels The added demand is still going to be there

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next month so you revise your expectations You're going to

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make them higher revenues go up So for the second

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month you expect to repeat four hundred thousand dollars in

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revenue However your labor adjustment should allow margins to get

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closer to the originally expected forty two percent which would

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give you contribution profits of about one hundred sixty eight

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grand Right Well once the month is over you'll look

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at the numbers and see if anything else doesn't match

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the new budgeted expectations Then you'll run the variance analysis

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process again and it becomes part of an ongoing cycle

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Basically checking budgets against projections against riel Life results well

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When the process is done you'll know whether your projections

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were just wrong and need to be adjusted You know

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like with the unexpected Irish demand for your new mouse

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sauce or you'll find points in the production process and

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distribution process and marketing process where your costs went awry

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like they were too expensive to get Your stuff shipped

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are marketed or placed or put on shelves or whatever

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was needed and then you'll adjust You can implement changes

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here to get things back to what you predicted Like

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when you figured out how the overtime hurt your profit

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margins and you brought in new workers overseas likely to

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fix the unnecessarily high labor costs Well now thatyou're Suraj

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a mouse sauce has taken off You can start your

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RND department working on its next big project soy sauce

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flavored insects for pets Spiders who

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