Note 10. Accrued Liabilities

Accrued liabilities as of October 31, 2017 and 2016 consisted of the following (in thousands):

	2017		2016
Accrued payroll and employee benefits	$	5,315	$	4,183
Accrued contract loss		37		—
Accrued product warranty costs ⁽¹⁾		348		516
Accrued material purchases ⁽²⁾		2,396		6,908
Accrued service agreement costs ⁽³⁾		3,319		6,030
Accrued legal, taxes, professional and other ⁽⁴⁾		6,966		3,263
	$	18,381	$	20,900

(1)

Activity in the accrued product warranty costs for the years ended October 31, 2017 and 2016 included additions for estimates of future warranty obligations of $0.6 million and $0.3 million, respectively, on contracts in the warranty period and reductions related to actual warranty spend of $0.8 million and $0.7 million, respectively, as contracts progress through the warranty period or are beyond the warranty period.

(2)

The Company acts as a procurement agent for POSCO Energy under an Integrated Global Supply Chain Agreement whereby the Company procures materials on POSCO Energy’s behalf for its Asian production facility. This liability represents amounts received for the purchase of materials on behalf of POSCO Energy. Amounts due to vendors is recorded as “Accounts payable.”

(3)

Activity in service agreement costs represents a decrease in loss accruals on service contracts of $1.6 million from $2.7 million as of October 31, 2016 to $1.1 million as of October 31, 2017. The decrease primarily relates to module exchanges performed during the year ended October 31, 2017. The accruals for performance guarantees also decreased from $3.3 million as of October 31, 2016 to $2.2 million as of October 31, 2017 resulting from guarantee payments to customers partially offset by additional accruals for the minimum output falling below the contract requirements for certain service agreements.

(4)	Other includes $4.4 million which represents contractual milestone billings for inventory that will be provided to POSCO Energy within the next twelve months and will not result in revenue recognition. An additional $10.4 million will be billed and collected under this arrangement.