Ethics and the Manager Richmond, Inc., operates a chain of 44 department stores. Two years ago, the board of directors of Richmond approved a large-scale remodeling of its stores to attract a more upscale clientele. Before finalizing these plans, two stores were remodeled as a test. Linda Perlman, assistant controller, was asked to oversee the financial reporting for these test stores, and she and other management personnel were offered bonuses based on the sales growth and profitability of these stores. While completing the financial reports. Perlman discovered a sizable inventory of outdated goods that should have been discounted for sale or returned to the manufacturer. She discussed the situation with her management colleagues; the consensus was to ignore reporting this inventory as obsolete because reporting it would diminish the financial results and their bonuses. Required: According to the IMA’s Statement of Ethical Professional Practice, would it be ethical for Perlman not to report the inventory as obsolete? Would it be easy for Perlman to take the ethical action in this situation?

Kimji Company is engaged in the business of export of garments. In the past, the performance of the company had been up to the expectations. In line with the latest technology, the company decided to upgrade its machinery. For this, the Finance Manager, Abdullah estimated the amount of funds required and the timings. This will help the company in linking the investment and the financing decisions on a continuous basis. Abdullah therefore, began with the preparation of a sales forecast for the next four years. He collected the relevant data about the profit estimates in the coming years. By doing this, he wanted to be sure about the availability of funds from the internal sources of the business. For the remaining funds he is trying to find out altemative sources from outside like loan from bank etc Answer the following question based on the case study in 500-1000 words. a. What is the role of Financial Management and what are the financial decisions Involved in the above case. Discuss…

Meredith had an excellent management science course as part of her MBA program in college, so she realizes that break-even analysis is needed to help make this decision. With this in mind, she instructs several staff members to investigate this prospective product further, including developing estimates of the related costs and revenues as well as forecasting the potential sales. One month later, the preliminary estimates of the relevant financial figures come back. The cost of designing the grandfather clock and then setting up the production facilities to produce this product would be approximately $250,000. There would be only one production run for this limited-edition grandfather clock. The additional cost for each clock produced would be roughly $2,000. The marketing department estimates that their price for selling the clocks can be successfully set at about $4,500 apiece, but a firm forecast of how many clocks can be sold at this price has not yet been obtained. However, it is…

Happyville, Inc., operates a chain of department stores located in the northwest. The first store began operations in 1965, and the company has steadily grown to its present size of 44 stores. Two years ago, the board of directors of Happyville approved a large-scale remodeling of its stores to attract a more upscale clientele.

You work for a firm of management consultants that offers assistance to new businesses. One of your clients is Blossom Manufacturing, a company that manufactures a small, but vital, component for the specialized lighting industry. Blossom is a new company (and a new client for your employer) and you have been assigned the task of advising it of its options for financing its inventory during the first few months. The marketing experts have told you that Blossom should have at least three months of inventory on hand so it can meet all demands from its customers. The annual production of the Blossom component is projected to be 140,400 units. Annual direct labour and direct material costs together are estimated at $351,000 per year. Variable manufacturing costs are estimated to be $210,600 per year; fixed manufacturing costs are projected to be $585,000 per year. Fixed marketing and administration costs are estimated at $819,000 per year. These projections are all for the company's first…

As a recent hire of B-Well, your job is to evaluate whether the company should open a traditional grocery store in Astoria or start online shopping option instead. Before deciding which project to undertake, the Board of Directors has already agreed that they will hire a consultant to verify their decision. The consultant is charging $16, 580 total. They have also agreed that they will hire an NYC marketing agency to promote B-Well's reputation. They are not sure what the charge will be for the marketing services. For now, they just have to decide which project they will undertake. Brick & Mortar Store. B-Well Health Mart has to rent and renovate a space in Astoria. The estimates for the up-front renovation costs range from $2,250,000 to $2,650,000 to be depreciated over the life of the project using straight-line with a zero salvage value. There is a foreclosed warehouse in the area that their lenders are offering at a large discount since the lenders are losing money on it. The…

Elitz and Van Aken, CPAs, offer three types of services to clients: auditing, tax, and small business accounting. Based on experience and projected growth, the following billable hours have been estimated for the year ending December 31, 2020: Service Billable Hours Audit Department: Staff 22,400 Partners 7,900 Tax Department: Staff 13,200 Partners 5,500 Small Business Accounting Department: Staff 3,000 Partners 600 The average billing rate for staff is $160 per hour, and the average billing rate for partners is $350 per hour. Prepare a professional fees earned budget for Elitz and Van Aken, CPAs, for the year ending December 31, 2020, using the following column headings and showing the estimated professional fees by type of service rendered and add additional rows in the table as needed:

Ginnian and Fitch, a regional accounting firm, performs yearly audits on a number of different for-profit and not-for-profit entities. Two years ago, Luisa Mellina, Ginnians partner in charge of operations, became concerned about the amount of audit time required by not-for-profit entities. As a result, she instituted a series of training programs focusing on the auditing of not-forprofit entities. Now, she would like to see if the training seemed to work. So, she ran a multiple regression on 22 months of data for Ginnian for three variables: the total monthly cost of audit professional time, the number of not-for-profit audits, and the hours of training in the audit of not-for-profit entities. The following printout was obtained: Required: 1. Write out the cost equation for Ginnians audit professional time. 2. If Ginnian expects to have 9 audits of not-for-profits next month and expects that audit professionals will have a total of 130 hours of not-for-profit training, what is the anticipated cost of professional time? 3. Are the hours spent auditing not-for-profit entities positively or negatively correlated with audit professional costs? Is percentage of experienced team members positively or negatively correlated with audit professional cost? 4. What does R2 mean in this equation? Overall, what is your evaluation of the cost equation that was developed for the cost of audit professionals?

Malone Industries has been in business for five years and has been very successful. In the past year, it expanded operations by buying Hot Metal Manufacturing for a price greater than the value of the net assets purchased. In the past year, the customer base has expanded much more than expected, and the companys owners want to increase the goodwill account. Your CPA firm has been hired to help Malone prepare year-end financial statements, and your boss has asked you to talk to Malones managers about goodwill and whether an adjustment can be made to the goodwill account. How do you respond to the owners and managers?

At the beginning of the last quarter of 20x1, Youngston, Inc., a consumer products firm, hired Maria Carrillo to take over one of its divisions. The division manufactured small home appliances and was struggling to survive in a very competitive market. Maria immediately requested a projected income statement for 20x1. In response, the controller provided the following statement: After some investigation, Maria soon realized that the products being produced had a serious problem with quality. She once again requested a special study by the controllers office to supply a report on the level of quality costs. By the middle of November, Maria received the following report from the controller: Maria was surprised at the level of quality costs. They represented 30 percent of sales, which was certainly excessive. She knew that the division had to produce high-quality products to survive. The number of defective units produced needed to be reduced dramatically. Thus, Maria decided to pursue a quality-driven turnaround strategy. Revenue growth and cost reduction could both be achieved if quality could be improved. By growing revenues and decreasing costs, profitability could be increased. After meeting with the managers of production, marketing, purchasing, and human resources, Maria made the following decisions, effective immediately (end of November 20x1): a. More will be invested in employee training. Workers will be trained to detect quality problems and empowered to make improvements. Workers will be allowed a bonus of 10 percent of any cost savings produced by their suggested improvements. b. Two design engineers will be hired immediately, with expectations of hiring one or two more within a year. These engineers will be in charge of redesigning processes and products with the objective of improving quality. They will also be given the responsibility of working with selected suppliers to help improve the quality of their products and processes. Design engineers were considered a strategic necessity. c. Implement a new process: evaluation and selection of suppliers. This new process has the objective of selecting a group of suppliers that are willing and capable of providing nondefective components. d. Effective immediately, the division will begin inspecting purchased components. According to production, many of the quality problems are caused by defective components purchased from outside suppliers. Incoming inspection is viewed as a transitional activity. Once the division has developed a group of suppliers capable of delivering nondefective components, this activity will be eliminated. e. Within three years, the goal is to produce products with a defect rate less than 0.10 percent. By reducing the defect rate to this level, marketing is confident that market share will increase by at least 50 percent (as a consequence of increased customer satisfaction). Products with better quality will help establish an improved product image and reputation, allowing the division to capture new customers and increase market share. f. Accounting will be given the charge to install a quality information reporting system. Daily reports on operational quality data (e.g., percentage of defective units), weekly updates of trend graphs (posted throughout the division), and quarterly cost reports are the types of information required. g. To help direct the improvements in quality activities, kaizen costing is to be implemented. For example, for the year 20x1, a kaizen standard of 6 percent of the selling price per unit was set for rework costs, a 25 percent reduction from the current actual cost. To ensure that the quality improvements were directed and translated into concrete financial outcomes, Maria also began to implement a Balanced Scorecard for the division. By the end of 20x2, progress was being made. Sales had increased to 26,000,000, and the kaizen improvements were meeting or beating expectations. For example, rework costs had dropped to 1,500,000. At the end of 20x3, two years after the turnaround quality strategy was implemented, Maria received the following quality cost report: Maria also received an income statement for 20x3: Maria was pleased with the outcomes. Revenues had grown, and costs had been reduced by at least as much as she had projected for the two-year period. Growth next year should be even greater as she was beginning to observe a favorable effect from the higher-quality products. Also, further quality cost reductions should materialize as incoming inspections were showing much higher-quality purchased components. Required: 1. Identify the strategic objectives, classified by the Balanced Scorecard perspective. Next, suggest measures for each objective. 2. Using the results from Requirement 1, describe Marias strategy using a series of if-then statements. Next, prepare a strategy map. 3. Explain how you would evaluate the success of the quality-driven turnaround strategy. What additional information would you like to have for this evaluation? 4. Explain why Maria felt that the Balanced Scorecard would increase the likelihood that the turnaround strategy would actually produce good financial outcomes. 5. Advise Maria on how to encourage her employees to align their actions and behavior with the turnaround strategy.

The Vintage Restaurant, on Captiva Island near Fort Myers, Florida, is owned and operated by Karen Payne. The restaurant just completed its third year of operation. During those three years, Karen sought to establish a reputation for the restaurant as a high-quality dining establishment that specializes in fresh seafood. Through the efforts of Karen and her staff, her restaurant has become one of the best and fastest-growing restaurants on the island. To better plan for future growth of the restaurant, Karen needs to develop a system that will enable her to forecast food and beverage sales by month for up to one year in advance. The following table shows the value of food and beverage sales (1,000s) for the first three years of operation: Managerial Report Perform an analysis of the sales data for the Vintage Restaurant. Prepare a report for Karen that summarizes your findings, forecasts, and recommendations. Include the following: 1. A time series plot. Comment on the underlying pattern in the time series. 2. Using the dummy variable approach, forecast sales for January through December of the fourth year. How would you explain this model to Karen? Assume that January sales for the fourth year turn out to be 295,000. What was your forecast error? If this error is large, Karen may be puzzled about the difference between your forecast and the actual sales value. What can you do to resolve her uncertainty about the forecasting procedure?

Suppose that Kicker had the following sales and cost experience (in thousands of dollars) for May of the current year and for May of the prior year: In May of the prior year, Kicker started an intensive quality program designed to enable it to build original equipment manufacture (OEM) speaker systems for a major automobile company. The program was housed in research and development. In the beginning of the current year, Kickers accounting department exercised tighter control over sales commissions, ensuring that no dubious (e.g., double) payments were made. The increased sales in the current year required additional warehouse space that Kicker rented in town. (Round ratios to four decimal places. Round sales dollars computations to the nearest dollar.) Required: 1. Calculate the contribution margin ratio for May of both years. 2. Calculate the break-even point in sales dollars for both years. 3. Calculate the margin of safety in sales dollars for both years. 4. CONCEPTUAL CONNECTION Analyze the differences shown by your calculations in Requirements 1, 2, and 3.

Jim Fallon was recently promoted to senior accountant. He was put in charge of the Fresh Eats audit because of his experience with other grocery clients. Fresh Eats has a small, but growing chain of natural food stores. This is the first year Fresh Eats has been audited. Because of its growth, Mellow needs additional capital. Mellow intends to take its audited financial statements to a bank to secure a loan. Jim has been assigned two inexperienced staff assistants for the audit. Because this is his first audit as a senior, he intends to bring the job in on budget. To save time, he gave the assistants the audit program for Happy Time Food Stores. He told his staff that this would make things go more quickly. He also told them that he could not spend much time with them at the client's place of business because "my time is billed out at such a high rate, we'll go right over budget." He did call them once a day from another audit on which he was working. The assistants told Jim that the…

Solution Summary: The author explains that P is not behaving ethically by not reporting the obsolete inventory. The bonus of P and other management personnel is dependent on the profitability of the company

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