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Fixed Cost Accounting

Satisfactory Essays

2-Why do manager put such a great amount of emphasis on controlling fixed cost in their organizations?
Fixed costs are constant and have an impact towards profits despite the number of items sold. Reducing the fixed cost amounts is a sustainable way to make more profits and increase operating leverage (Edmonds & Tsay & Olds). Suggested by Reiss, outsourcing is a way of turning fixed costs into variable costs. Variable costs have a dependence of cost based on production or sale of the product (Reiss, 2010).
One example of this fixed vs. variable costs transition would be telesales, instead of hiring 45 people to work inbound and outbound phone calls one could pay a service to answer the phones at a cost per minute. Using a phone service and experiencing high call volumes, the cost would a variable cost as a reflection of sales. Having 45 salaried telesales employees and only …show more content…

(2010, November 2). Outsourcing Turns Fixed Costs Into Variable Costs. Retrieved August 9, 2015.
Edmonds, T., Tsay, B., & Olds, P. (2011). Fundamental Managerial Accounting Concepts (6th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

3-What is meant by the statement, my company has good operating leverage? How does good operating leverage magnify earnings results with modest revenue increase?

With a small change in revenues, one will see a larger change in profits with positive operating leverage. Operating leverage is often referred to as the ratio of fixed costs compared to revenues (Edmonds & Tsay & Olds).
A company with high operating leverage as an example could be a business with expensive machines. In the medical lab environment, a fixed cost of buying a machine for medical testing one would presume to be high. For the lab, it would be significant to have the lab testing machines running twenty-four hours a day seven days a week. A percentage change in revenues would negatively impact a medical testing organization due to the machine cost stay constant (Berman,

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