Introduction of the term Margin of Safety

Question

Provide a brief introduction of the term Margin of Safety?

Answer 1

Margin of Safety is the quantity of sales that makes profit. In other terms, sales beyond Break Even Point are named as Margin of Safety. It is evaluated as the differentiation between total sales and the break even sales. It can be stated in monetary terms or number of units. It can be stated as below:

Margin of Safety = Sales – Break Even Sales

= Sales - {(Fixed Cost) / (P/V Ratio)}

= ((Sales * (P/V) Ratio) - Fixed Cost) / (P/V) Ratio

= (Contribution - Fixed Cost) / (P/V) Ratio

= Profit / (P/V) Ratio

The size of margin of safety is a very significant guide to the financial power of a business. If margin of safety is huge, that indicates that BEP is much below the real sales, that means business is in a sound condition and decrease in sales will not influence the profit of the business. On the other hand, when margin of safety is low down any loss of sales might be a serious issue. Therefore, efforts require to be made to diminish fixed costs, variable costs or rising the selling price or sales volume to improve contribution and entire P/V Ratio.