Bailey Jones owns a catering company that stages banquets and parties for both
individuals and companies. The business is seasonal, with heavy demand during the
summer months and year-end holidays and light demand at other times. Bailey has
gathered the following cost information from the past year:
Required:
a.Using the high-low method, compute the overhead cost per labor hour and the fixed
overhead cost per month.
b.Bailey has booked 2,800 labor hours for the coming month. How much overhead
should he expect to incur?
c.If Bailey books one more catering job for the month, requiring 200 labor hours, how
much additional overhead should he expect to incur?
d.Bailey recently attended a meeting of the local Chamber of Commerce, at which he
heard an accounting professor discuss regression analysis and its business applications.
After the meeting, Bailey enlisted the professor’s assistance in preparing a regression
analysis of the overhead data he collected. This analysis yielded an estimated fixed cost
of $48,000 per month and a variable cost of $4 per labor hour. Why do these estimates
differ from your high-low estimates, calculated in part (a)?