Sales Mix Variance: Definition, Comparison, Formula, and Example

Depending on the sales mix or the ratio of low cost products to high cost products carried by the business, the breakeven point might be higher or lower. Based on this sales mix, sales managers can go to marketing and advise that more advertising budget be allocated to the weight-lifting set than to the heat-tech running jacket for the next quarter. Even though the price of the product is lower, the profit margin is higher, so the company will make more profit overall by selling weight-lifting sets than heat-tech running jackets.

  1. Activa decides to compare its two most popular products from the previous year.
  2. Older, less-profitable products can be gradually swapped out for these new ones, so that the overall profit margin of the business gradually increases over time.
  3. A Revenue Sales Mix calculator simplifies this, giving sales teams a quick and clear view of how revenue is distributed across various offerings.
  4. Sales mix variance explains the difference between the sales mix a company has budgeted for and its actual sales mix.
  5. If XYZ’s profits are slowing, the firm may shift the marketing and sales budget to promote the products that offer the highest profit margin.

Assume, for example, that a hardware store sells a $100 trimmer and a $200 lawnmower and earns $20 per unit and $30 per unit, respectively. The profit margin on the trimmer is 20% ($20/$100), while the lawnmower’s profit margin is 15% ($30/$200). Although the lawnmower has a higher sales price and generates more revenue, the trimmer earns a higher profit per dollar sold. The hardware store budgets for the units sold and the profit generated for each product the business sells. Sales mix is the proportion of different products and services that comprise the total sales of a company. Thus, if a company introduces a new product that has a low profit, and which it sells aggressively, it is quite possible that profits will decline even as total sales increase.

This could look like allocating more resources to paid advertising for wired speakers or leveraging them as an up-selling opportunity. In this example, your company sells speakers, and you want to compare two of your products—a wired speaker that retails for $35 and a Bluetooth speaker that retails for $65. To calculate the sales mix ratio of each product or category, you divide the sales of this product or category by the total revenue of the business and multiply by 100 to get the percentage. Sales volume variance has to sub-variance known as sales quantity variance and sales mix variance. Focused solely on these initial profit margins, Activa’s sales mix goal should be to increase sales of the weight-lifting set. If the company wasn’t looking to solve a problem but instead was simply looking at how to allocate advertising, this would be a great place to stop.

Reasons for favourable Sales Mix Variance

Most commonly, https://www.wave-accounting.net/ refers to the proportion of sales a single product accounts for in a company’s total sales. It is used to determine which products are performing well and which products are sinking so that inventory adjustments can be made down the line. Sales mix digs deep into the individual percentages and profits of your products so you can determine what stays, what goes, and what gets an update. Not every product is a best-seller, but that doesn’t mean it can’t hold value for the company. Through these calculations, we can see the sales of wired speakers had a positive variance, meaning the company made an additional $606 dollars in sales of this product. For the Bluetooth speakers, there was an unfavorable variance, meaning the actual cost to produce and sell the Bluetooth speakers was $138.60 greater than the expected cost.

For example, companies use profit margins (net income/sales) to compare the profitability of different products. The accountant for freelancers contribution margin is the amount of actual dollars a company sees from the sales mix percentage in a given time period. This metric is used to calculate the number of product units a company needs to sell in order to remain at its sales mix goal.

The sales mix is related to the product mix but focuses specifically on the revenue contribution of each product, whereas the product mix considers the variety of products offered. To calculate the break-even point for multiple product lines, first determine the sales mix, which is the percent of overall sales each of the two products represents. As you can see, management must decide whether to create a sales mix that is heavy in high cost products or heavy in low cost products. Planning a sales mix is a strategy decision that management must make based on economic and market conditions. Analyzing the sales mix variance helps a company detect trends and consider the impact they on company profits. Another way to make informed inventory decisions is to integrate your sales mix data with a state-of-the-art CRM like Zendesk Sell.

So this one report has given us a lot of information, which can be used to analyze the performance of the business. Shaun Conrad is a Certified Public Accountant and CPA exam expert with a passion for teaching. After almost a decade of experience in public accounting, he created MyAccountingCourse.com to help people learn accounting & finance, pass the CPA exam, and start their career. Sales mix variance is a useful tool in data analysis, but alone it may not give a complete picture of why something is the way it is (root cause).

Sales Mix Calculator

At the end of the month or quarter, you can compare the actual sales made and sales mix to what was projected. Analysts and investors use a company’s sales mix to determine the company’s prospects for overall growth and profitability. If profits are flat or declining, the company can de-emphasize or even stop selling a low-profit product and focus on increasing sales of a high-profit product or service. Revenue Sales Mix is a key metric that shows how different products or services contribute to overall sales. A Revenue Sales Mix calculator simplifies this, giving sales teams a quick and clear view of how revenue is distributed across various offerings.

This tool helps identify high-performing products, prioritize marketing efforts, and make informed decisions to boost overall sales performance efficiently. For instance, a bicycle retailer might carry five $500 bicycles, two $1,000 bicycles, and one $5,000 bicycle. The company has a smaller investment in the $500 bicycles and will most likely receive a smaller profit on the sale of these bikes. The $5,000 bicycle requires a higher investment and will also return a higher profit percentage than the lower cost bicycles. Let’s assume that an automobile company plans to sell 100,000 units in the current year. The planned sales mix is 20,000 units of very-low-profit models + 50,000 units of medium-profit models + 30,000 units of very-high-profit models.

Examples of Inventory Cost Issues

In this post, we’ll break down what sales mix is, how to calculate it, and some examples of using it to make business decisions. An example of a sales mix ratio could be 40% Product A, 30% Product B, and 30% Product C. Discover the vision, mission, and team behind Kennect, and how we’re transforming incentive compensation management. Automate and simplify incentive calculations with Kennect’s seamless data management. Factors impacting sales mix include market trends, consumer preferences, seasonality, and promotional strategies. Understand key terms and concepts in incentive compensation management with our detailed glossary.

When you can compare product and pricing statistics against customer purchase histories and preferences, you can make smart choices about where to head next as a company. It’s worth noting that sales mix can also refer to the variety of products sold by a company (or the “mix” of “sales,” if you will), but for business purposes, we’re going to use the definition above. Although this is a part of doing business, it is important to understand how each product line is performing, and you’ll use a sales mix formula to determine that. The Sales Mix Calculator works by inputting sales data for individual products and calculating the percentage each product contributes to the total revenue.

Use the sales mix and sales mix variance formulas to optimize your sales strategy this quarter. Sales mix is the proportion of each type of product sold in a business compared to the business’s total sales. The purpose of calculating sales mix is to understand how the sales of different types of products impact profits. The sales mix report is important, because it’s used by different departments in the business to make decisions. When adjusting the sales mix, it is of considerable importance to understand the impact on the company constraint. Some products require more bottleneck time than others, and so may leave little room for the production of additional units.

With a smart marketing plan, weight sets could move back into a best-seller slot. It’s all about avoiding stagnancy and moving away from decisions that are actively hurting your bottom line. It sounds complicated, but as we’ll see in the next section, the formula is quite simple. It’s keeping tabs on product changes and remembering to do the calculations that can get overwhelming and cause revenue losses.

Internal decisions such as more incentives for an underperforming product, discounts and offers for less profitable products are also accomplished by the company so that it can boost the sales. Managing the sales mix is essential to maintain the profitability of the organization. Product A sold 500 units, and that was enough to hit the necessary sales mix percentage. Product B, however, sold 800 units when it needed to sell 895 units to meet its sales mix percentage. That’s a difference of 95 units, or 2 percent in sales mix percentage (14 percent instead of 16 percent).

With the help of the sales mix, an organization determines if the product should receive the priority and focus. The decisions are made on the earning capacity, the resources used and the demand in the market for the product. Let’s say our speaker company has a goal of selling 750 total units, 500 units of wired speakers, and 250 units of Bluetooth speakers, during a sales period.