Break-Even Units Calculator

Inspectable records

Ledger state

The current ledger marks this instrument verified clean within the source-bound verification corpus.

Area

Finance, Economics & Business (educational only — never individualized investment, tax, or legal advice)

Tranche

tranche-4

Evidence ID

t4-248

Ledger rows

1

No ledger note is attached.

Review findings

The core break-even formula is standard, but the instrument cannot be fully verified as specified because breakeven revenue and margin of safety are claimed outputs without formulas, and margin of safety also lacks the required actual-sales input and definition. Specify formulas, required inputs, consistent time and currency units, validation for Price<=VariableCost, zero actual sales, and the rounding policy before release.

Formula and scope findings

• BE_units=FixedCosts/(Price-VariableCost) is the standard break-even formula when fixed costs, price per unit, and variable cost per unit use consistent units and Price>VariableCost.
• The spec claims breakeven revenue but provides no formula; the usual formula is breakeven_revenue=BE_units*Price.
• The spec claims margin of safety but provides no definition or required input. It could mean actual units minus break-even units, actual revenue minus break-even revenue, or a percentage; actual sales or units are not listed as inputs.
• The formula returns fractional units, but the claim is units needed to cover costs. A real-unit result normally requires rounding up to the next whole unit, which is not specified.
• The formula does not state whether fixed costs may be zero or whether negative costs are rejected.

Unit assumptions

• Fixed costs and all per-unit amounts must use the same currency and scale, such as USD, USD per unit, and USD per unit.
• Price and variable cost must both refer to the same unit of product or service.
• Breakeven revenue is assumed here to mean BE_units*Price.
• For test-vector illustration only, margin of safety is shown as actual units minus break-even units, actual revenue minus break-even revenue, and margin-of-safety percentage=(actual revenue-breakeven revenue)/actual revenue.
• The displayed raw break-even units may be fractional; an operational units-needed result should use ceiling(raw break-even units).

Boundary hardening

BREAK_CLAIMED · SELF_FLAGGED

The calculator can encounter an undefined division when price equals variable cost and should reject nonpositive contribution margins. The specified outputs also include margin of safety, but no actual-sales input is supplied, so that output is undefined for every test vector.

Errata and corrections

No applied erratum is attached to this unique-name record.

Inspectable example

4 review vectors are recorded. One source-bound sample is shown below.

{
  "inputs": {
    "fixed_costs": 12000,
    "price_per_unit": 50,
    "variable_cost_per_unit": 30,
    "actual_units": 800,
    "currency": "USD"
  },
  "expected_outputs": {
    "breakeven_units_raw": 600,
    "breakeven_units_required": 600,
    "breakeven_revenue": 30000,
    "margin_of_safety_units": 200,
    "margin_of_safety_revenue": 10000,
    "margin_of_safety_percent": 0.25
  },
  "working": "Contribution margin per unit = 50 - 30 = 20 USD/unit. Raw break-even units = 12000 / 20 = 600 units. Required whole units = ceiling(600) = 600 units. Break-even revenue = 600 * 50 = 30000 USD. Actual revenue = 800 * 50 = 40000 USD. Margin of safety units = 800 - 600 = 200 units. Margin of safety revenue = 40000 - 30000 = 10000 USD. Margin of safety percentage = 10000 / 40000 = 0.25 = 25%."
}

Related workflows

Sources and evidence

These pointers bind the page to evidence. They do not grant authority or collapse verification into deployment.

• VERIFIED_LEDGER.json · VERIFIED_CLEAN
• evidence-tranche4/tranche4-results.json
• BOUNDARY_HAZARD_CATALOG.json