cost volume profit analysis

The gross profit margin measures the amount of profits that a company generates from its operations without consideration of its indirect costs. Thehigher thegross profit margin, the greater the efficiency of a company’s operations (Besley & Brigham 2007). It means that the company is generating enough income to cover its operating expenses. On the contrary, a lower gross profit margin indicates that the business is not generating adequate income to cover its operating expenses.

This measures the relationship between net profits and sales of a firm. The net profit margin is indicative of management’s ability to operate the business with sufficient success not only to recover revenues of the period, the cost of merchandise or services, the expenses of operating the business and the cost of the borrowed funds, but also leave a margin of reasonable

The break-even point in units for computer paper is $52,000.00. Meaning to break-even, you have to sell $52,000.00 of units of computer paper. “The margin of safety, expressed in either dollars or a percentage, shows how much sales can be reduced without sustaining losses” (Schneider, 2012). The formula to find margin of safety in dollars is: margin of safety in dollars equals the actual (or expected) costs minus the break-even costs. So in the case of computer paper. The actual cost of $30,000.00 minus the break-even point of $52,000.00 gives you the margin of safety of -$22,000.00. Meaning you can cut the sales of computer paper by $22,000.00 and not sustain a loss.

According to, Skills for Business Decisions, “Cost-volume-profit (CVP) analysis examines changes in profits in response to changes in sales volumes, costs, and prices.” (Kimmel P.D. 2009) A company’s profit is the CVP profit equation of Profit = Revenue – Expenses. A Cost-volume-profit (CVP) analysis consists of five basic components that include:

Contribution Margin = (Unit selling price – unit variable cost) / unit selling price = ($9.00 – $2.60) / $9.00 = 0.7111 = 71.111%

According to the calculation, increasing volume at the same expensive cost will increase profit. Nonetheless, revising the freight cost and reducing its variable cost to 6% per container (1,625) from the base case (1,725), will affect the company profit positively. For example, with 10,000 containers(phase 1), the company earned a profit of $40,000/year, and with 60,000 containers(phase 3), the gain is $5,040,000 regarding the base case. After the 6% off in the variable cost, the firm could make a 3.85% phase1, 34,2% phase 2, 45,65% phase 3 of increase in its

Gross profit is defined as the difference between Sales and Cost of Sales. The gross margin (or gross profit ratio) expresses the gross profit as a proportion of net sales. The gross profit margin ratio measures how efficiently a company uses its resources, materials, and labour in the production process by showing the percentage of net sales remaining after subtracting the cost of making and selling a product or service. It indicates the profitability of a business before overhead costs. The higher the percentage, the more the business retains of each dollar of sales. So: the higher the gross profit margin ratio, the better.

A common use of the Gross Margin is to estimate a company’s breakeven sales volume.(Higgins,2012)

The $320,000, on the other hand, is a fixed cost associated with the proposed addition.

The next step would be for management to know precisely how their decision to downsize capacity would impact the firm’s future operating costs, and also identify specific areas in which the firm could achieve additional cost reductions. Additionally, the cost analysis would help forecast the firm’s operating costs and projected profits (or losses) for the upcoming fiscal year. However, before we can proceed with such analysis, an examination of how the various categories of Continental’s costs behave is in order.

Break-even point analysis is a measurement system that calculates the margin of safety by comparing the amount of revenues or units that must be sold to cover fixed and variable costs associated with making the sales. In other words, it’s a way to calculate when a project will be profitable by equating its total revenues with its total expenses. There are several different uses for the equation, but all of them deal with managerial accounting and cost management (Break-Even Point, n.d.)

Break even analysis can be used to decide whether to alter the existing product emphasis or not. For example in this case, if we refer last year’s data, we can see that the product C is not economically feasible to manufacture at $2.40 / unit. Following table gives the analysis for checking whether the company can afford to invest in additional “C” capacity.

In this analysis initially is possible to set two main characteristics to being evaluated: cost and productivity

Break Even Point in Sales = (Total Fixed Costs + Target Profit) ÷ Contribution Margin Ratio

Cost volume profit (CVP) analysis and costing for the 21st century has evolved into a very complex and difficult paradigm. Even the most gifted accountants find that grasping the entire concept of accounting for a corporation can be very mind-boggling and difficult. Yet, understanding such a fundamental principle can allow corporations to grow in ways that other, less educated, corporations can never dream to achieve and simultaneously understand the ‘bottom-line’. In this paper we will discuss value costing in the 21st century, other relevant costing methods, and the relevancy of CVP in today’s workplace.