Sales variance

Hi there! So, imagine you have a lemonade stand and you sell lemonade for 50 cents per cup. Last week, you sold 100 cups and made $50. This week, you sold 80 cups and made $40. The difference between what you made last week and what you made this week is called a sales variance.

Now, let's break down the term "sales variance" a bit more. "Sales" means the amount of money you received from selling something, in this case lemonade. "Variance" means a difference or change between two things. So, sales variance is just the difference in how much money you made from selling lemonade between two different time periods (in our example, last week and this week).

This variance can be positive or negative. In our example, the sales variance was negative because you made less money this week than you did last week. A negative variance could happen for a lot of reasons, like maybe it was rainy this week so fewer people wanted to buy lemonade, or maybe you raised your prices to 75 cents per cup and that scared away some customers.

On the other hand, if you made more money this week than you did last week, that would be a positive sales variance. This could happen if you added a new flavor of lemonade that people really liked, or if you set up your stand in a more visible location so more people saw it and stopped to buy cups.

So, that's what sales variance means. It's just a way of measuring how your sales are changing over time compared to some other period. It's a good thing to keep track of because it can help you figure out what's working and what's not working in your business, so you can make changes to improve your sales over time.