Sometimes costs cannot easily be categorized at variable or fixed. These costs may vary with production, but also are necessary even in the absence of production or sales. These costs are referred to as mixed costs. Mixed costs can be split up into fixed and variable components as part of an effort to accurately measure either type of cost.  An example of a mixed costs is the wage expense for an employee that earns salary plus commissions. The salary is paid even if no sales are made, but commission depends on the sales volume. In this example, the commission is a variable cost and salary is fixed.  Mixed costs can also apply to wage earners if they are guaranteed a fixed number of hours each pay period. Regular hours would be a fixed cost, but any overtime would be variable. In addition, the cost of employee benefits might be recognized as a mixed cost. A somewhat more complicated example is that of utilities costs. Electricity, water, and gas must be paid even if no production occurs. However, they may be used in greater amounts as part of production. Splitting these costs into fixed and variable categories requires a more complex method. In order to split up mixed costs into fixed and variable components, you can use the "high-low" method. This method starts with the mixed costs from the highest and lowest months of production and uses the difference to calculate variable cost proportion. To get started, determine which months experienced the highest and lowest levels of activity (production). Record the activity in a measurable way (like machine-hours) and the mixed cost you want to assess for each month.  For example, imagine that your company cuts metal parts with a water cutter as part of a production process. This requires water as a variable cost that increases with the amount of production. However, you also use have a water expense that arises from running your production facility (for drinking, restrooms, etc.). Your water costs would then be a mixed cost. Say that in this example, in the highest month you had a water bill of $9,000 and 60,000 machine-hours of production. In the lowest, you had an $8,000 water bill and 50,000 machine-hours of production. Find the difference between both figures (cost and production) by finding the variable cost rate. The variable cost rate can be found using the formula VCR=C−cP−p{\displaystyle VCR={\frac {C-c}{P-p}}}, where C and c are the costs for the higher and lower months, respectively, and P and p refer to their production levels. In this example, this would be VCR=$9,000−$8,00060,000−50,000{\displaystyle VCR={\frac {\$9,000-\$8,000}{60,000-50,000}}}. This then simplifies to VCR=$1,00010,000{\displaystyle VCR={\frac {\$1,000}{10,000}}}, which gives $0.10{\displaystyle \$0.10}. This means that each additional machine-hour of production costs $0.10. You can now use the variable cost rate to determine what amount of your mixed cost is variable cost. Multiply the variable cost rate by the production amount to get this figure. In the example, this would be $0.10×50,000{\displaystyle \$0.10\times 50,000}, or $5,000{\displaystyle \$5,000}, for the lower month and $0.10×60,000{\displaystyle \$0.10\times 60,000}, or $6,000{\displaystyle \$6,000}, for the highest month. These represent the variable costs for each month. You can subtract this from the total monthly cost to get the fixed cost, which is $3,000 in both cases.
افهم التكاليف المختلطة. قس النشاط والتكلفة. احسب معدّل التكلفة المتغيرة. احسب التكلفة المتغيرة.