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Break Even Analysis

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Break Even Analysis In business planning, asking the proper questions and obtaining answers to those questions is arguably the most important thing. Questions such as; how much do we have to sell to reach our profit goal? How much do our sales need to increase in order to cover a planned increase in advertising costs? What price should we charge to cover our costs and allow for the planned profit goals? Is our business going to be profitable? Answers to such difficult questions become accessible with the utilization of the break even analysis. Break even analysis can be conceived arguably as one of the simplest tools in accounting; however, its simplicity does not take away from its importance. Break even analysis is used in …show more content…

In using the break even formula and plugging in the above numbers, we would determine how many units we would have to sell to break even, which in this specific case it would be 1,000 fence panels. This tells us that selling fewer than 1,000 fence panels would yield losses. Determining what the break even number is becomes very vital as we try to next project how long it will take to sell those 1,000 panels as the time it will take us to sell those panels would mean the amount of time we would have our money invested in and we would have to assess what impact having our money tied up in the production of those panels would have on the overall business and address whether we can even afford to have our money tied up into those fence panels for that specific amounts of time. In looking at the next possibility where we can use the break even analysis, it would involve the question of how to manufacture a product, in terms of the nature of operations and how it will affect fixed costs. In this instance, we as a company may have a good idea on the quantity expect, the likely selling price, and the variable costs involved, but be uncertain about how to structure the new operation. For example, if the volume expected to be 15,000 units, at a selling price of $5 and variable costs of $3, the break even equation tells us that the fixed costs cannot be greater

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