Answer to F5

What you have written seems fine, except that for part b(ii) it is worth pointing out that the adverse sales variance is greater than the overall favourable materials variances. That is why it would be better not to have changed the mix. I cannot possibly say how many marks it deserves - I am not the marker :-) However it should certainly get more than the 50% needed.

Thanks once again.

You are welcome :-)

Sir when you say it should get the 50% needed do you mean for part b)i or part b ii).

What you wrote seems good enough to score well on those parts. I am not prepared to be any more specific because I will not be marking your paper. You will have to wait to get your mark from the ACCA - nothing I say will make any difference to that.

Hi sir i am a bit confused and need your help to clarify this matter. If you look at your solutions and ACCA's for december 14 question q2 part b) you and acca have actually taken total factory costs to be 306400 and divided this by 7200 hours to calculate cost per factory hour for tpar calculation. But acca have written a note below their calculations in the offical f5 december 2014 M.S. " Answers based on total salary costs were $80,000 were also equally acceptable since the wording of question was open to interpretation." does this mean that if you had taken 106400 (factory costs) +80000(salary costs) and divided by 2400 hours for one senior stylist and the figure you get for cost per factory hour is the right figure to use in the tpar calculation and would you be awarded full marks? The reason why i am saying 2400 hours for one individual senior stylist is that if you only include one senior stylist in your total factory costs calculation you should also include 1 senior stylist for the bn hours or otherwise the calculation isnt on like to like basis. Thanks again in advance for your help.

No - it does not mean that. You have to divide by the total time. it just means that using only the 80,000 would be acceptable.