Pear makes watches. The fixed overhead costs for 2015 total $648,000. The company uses direct labor-hours for fixed overhead allocation and anticipates 21,600 hours during the year for 540,000 units. An equal number of units are budgeted for each month. During October, 48,000 watches were produced and $52,000 was spent on fixed overhead.

Required:

a. Determine the fixed overhead rate for 2015 based on the units of input.

b. Determine the fixed overhead static-budget variance for October.

c. Determine the production-volume overhead variance for October.

In december of 2004, the company you own entered into a 20-year contract with a grain supplier for daily deliveries of grain to its hot dog bun manufacturing facility. the contract called for "10,000 pounds of grain" to be delivered to the facility at the price of $100,000 per day. until february 2017, the supplier provided processed grain which could easily be used in your manufacturing process. however, no longer wanting to absorb the cost of having the grain processed, the supplier began delivering whole grain. the supplier is arguing that the contract does not specify the type of grain that would be supplied and that it has not breached the contract. your company is arguing that the supplier has an onsite processing plant and processed grain was implicit to the terms of the contract. over the remaining term of the contract, reshipping and having the grain processed would cost your company approximately $10,000,000, opposed to a cost of around $1,000,000 to the supplier. after speaking with in-house counsel, it was estimated that litigation would cost the company several million dollars and last for years. weighing the costs of litigation, along with possible ambiguity in the contract, what are three options you could take to resolve the dispute? which would be the best option for your business and why?