Question

The Personnel Department at Hernandez Bros. is centralized and provides services to the two operating units: Miami and New York. The Miami unit is the original unit of the company and is well established. The New York unit is new, much like a start-up company. The costs of the Personnel Department are allocated to each unit based on the number of employees in order to determine unit profitability. The current rate is $630 per employee. Data for the fiscal year just ended show the following.

	Miami		New York
Number of employees	1,330		430
Number of new hires	13		33
Number of employees departing	17		17

Orlando, the manager of the New York unit, is unhappy with the results of the controller’s study. He asks the controller to develop separate rates for fixed and variable costs in the Personnel Department. The controller reports back to Orlando that the rates would be as follows:

Allocation based on	Variable Rate				Fixed Rate				Total Rate
Employees	$	115	per employee		$	215	per employee		$	330	per employee
Transitions	$	2,130	per transition		$	4,470	per transition		$	6,600	per transition

a. Orlando argues that New York should only be allocated the variable costs from this system, because the company would have to pay the fixed costs even if New York did not exist. Compute the cost allocated to each unit using the approach Orlando prefers.

Answer 1

a.

	Total allocated costs
Miami	952850
New York	155950

Workings:

Current allocation	837900	270900	1108800
	[1330*630]	[430*630]

Based on Orlando's advise, allocation to new York unit:

For new york unit
Variable cost of employees	49450	[430*115]
Variable cost of transition	106500	[50*2130]
Total costs to be allocated	155950

Balance to Miami = 1108800 - 155950 = 952,850