8. GUARANTEES AND PRODUCT WARRANTIES

From time to time, our subsidiaries guarantee third party payment obligations in connection with the sale of machines to customers that use financing. We follow Financial Accounting Standards Board, or FASB, guidance for accounting for guarantees (codified in ASC 460). As of April 30, 2015, we had 19 outstanding third party payment guarantees totaling approximately $1.5 million. The terms of these guarantees are consistent with the underlying customer financing terms. Upon shipment of a machine, the customer has the risk of ownership. The customer does not obtain title, however, until it has paid for the machine. A retention of title clause allows us to recover the machine if the customer defaults on the financing. We accrue liabilities under these guarantees at fair value, which amounts are insignificant.

We provide warranties on our products with respect to defects in material and workmanship. The terms of these warranties are generally one year for machines and certain components and shorter periods for service parts. We recognize a reserve with respect to this obligation at the time of product sale, with subsequent warranty claims recorded against the reserve. The amount of the warranty reserve is determined based on historical trend experience and any known warranty issues that could cause future warranty costs to differ from historical experience. A reconciliation of the changes in our warranty reserve is as follows (in thousands):

	Six Months Ended
	April 30, 2015			April 30, 2014
Balance, beginning of period	$	2,048		$	1,778
Provision for warranties during the period		1,739			1,510
Charges to the reserve		(1,641	)		(1,510	)
Impact of foreign currency translation		(56	)		(3	)
Balance, end of period	$	2,090		$	1,775

The year-over-year increase in our warranty reserve reflected higher sales volumes and anticipated claims of machines under warranty as well as the sale of a greater number of our higher-performance machines which have a higher cost per claim.