What are various types of sales variances in cost accounting

What is Sales Variance?

Sales variance is the difference between the standard or expected revenue and the actual revenue.

It is different from cost variances because cost variances occur when costs deviate from the budgeted amounts. Investigation of what caused the variance is crucial to understand in order to make management decisions such as buy or make a decision or continue or discontinue a product line.

Reasons and Types of Sales Variances

There are two factors that might have caused the total variance: either a difference in the number of units that were sold or in the selling price.

Because two different factors are affecting the total sales variance, they must be divided into the following 2 types:

Sales volume variance

The effect of actual sales volume being different from budgeted sales volume, calculated using standard profit, on profitability is calculated using the sales volume variance formula.

Please keep in mind that the difference between actual and budget selling prices is taken into account when calculating the sales price variance.

While this variance has been used to isolate the effect of volume variations on profit, it still does not provide a great deal of information about the performance of products on the market. As a result, additional investigation is required.

Sales price variance

The impact on the profitability of the actual selling price is different from the budgeted selling price is calculated using the sales price variance (SPV). Sales volume variance should be taken into consideration in conjunction with this variance.

The following are the formulas for calculating each of these variances:

Sales volume variance:
Standard selling price x (Actual number of units sold – Standard number of units sold)
Sales price variance:
The actual number of units sold x (Actual selling price – Standard selling price)
Total sales variance:
Sales volume variance + Sales price variance

For example, the following information is given about a product:

• The actual number of units sold: 4800
• The standard number of units sold: 5000
• Actual sales at a standard selling price: $192,000
• Actual sales at an actual selling price: $187,200
• Actual selling price: $39
• Standard selling price: $40

The sales volume variance = $40(4800 – 5000) = $8000 adverse (as the actual sales volume was lower than the standard sales volume)

The sales price variance = $187,200 – 192,000 = $4800 adverse

The direct material cost variance = $12,00 adverse

Sales volume variance

Sales volume variance calculates the effect of actual sales volume is different from the budget, sales volume using standard profit, on profitability. Please note that sales price variance takes account of the difference between actual and budget selling prices.

(Budget sales price – budget cost) x budget quantity (Less) (Budget sales price – budget cost) x actual quantity