Accrued liabilities as of July 31, 2017 and October 31, 2016 consisted of the following:

	July 31,		October 31,
	2017		2016
Accrued payroll and employee benefits	$	4,311	$	4,183
Accrued contract loss		29		—
Accrued product warranty cost ⁽¹⁾		226		516
Accrued material purchases⁽²⁾		3,199		6,908
Accrued service agreement costs⁽³⁾		3,076		6,030
Accrued taxes, legal, professional and other		2,281		3,263
Accrued liabilities	$	13,122	$	20,900

(1)

Activity in the accrued product warranty costs for the nine months ended July 31, 2017 included additions for estimates of future warranty obligations of $0.5 million on contracts in the warranty period and reductions related to actual warranty spend of $0.8 million as contracts progress through the warranty period or are beyond the warranty period.

(2)

The Company acts as a procurement agent for POSCO under an Integrated Global Supply Chain Agreement whereby the Company procures materials on POSCO’s behalf for its Asian production facility. This liability represents amounts received for the purchase of materials on behalf of POSCO. 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 $1.8 million from $2.7 million as of October 31, 2016 to $0.9 million as of July 31, 2017. The decrease primarily relates to module exchanges performed during the nine months ended July 31, 2017. The accruals for performance guarantees also decreased from $3.3 million as of October 31, 2016 to $2.1 million as of July 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.