Assignment: Accounting Practices for Managers

Q1-1: What is Zero based budgeting?

Q1-2: A company's annual sales budget is for 120,000 units, spread equally through the year. It needs to have one and three quarter's month stock at the end of each month. If opening stock is 12,000 units, what are the number of units to be produced in the first month of the budget year?

Q1-3: The standard costs for a manufacturing business are £12 per unit for direct materials, £8 per unit for direct labour and £5 per unit for manufacturing overhead. The sales projection is for 5,000 units, 3,500 units need to be in stock at the end of the period and 1,500 units are in stock at the beginning of the period. What will the production budget show in costs for that period?

Q1-4: Receivable increase by £15,000 and payables increase by £11,000. What is the effect on cash flow from the Statement of Cash Flow from these two items?

Q1-5: Randy Airplanes Ltd is a privately owned business. It has budgeted for profits (after deducting depreciation of £41,000) of £150,000. Debtors are expected to increase by £20,000, inventory is planned to increase by £5,000 and creditors should increase by £8,000. Capital expenditure is planned of £50,000, income tax of £35,000 has to be paid and loan repayments are due totaling £25,000. What is the forecast cash position of Randy's at the end of the budget year, assuming a current bank overdraft of £15,000?

Q2-1: What are a flexible, incremental, and activity-based budget? Please explain each.

Q2-2: A company has budgeted for materials of £170,000 but the actual costs are £164,000. The company has also budgeted for labour of £130,000 with actual costs being £133,000. What is the expense variance and is it favorable or adverse?

Q2-3a: How do increases/decreases in costs and/or prices effect each of the variances in standard costing?

Q2-3b: How do increases/decreases in production labor effect each of the variances in standard costing?

Q3-1: What is the difference between Kaizen costing, target costing, and life cycle costing?

Q3-2: Trans PLC estimates that a new product will sell in sufficient quantities to justify its manufacture at a selling price of £175. The company needs to invest £5 million to produce a quantity of 10,000 of these new products per year and requires a return on that investment of 12% per annum. The current prediction is that the product will cost £140 to manufacture. How should Trans reengineer its costs to achieve the target selling price and target rate of return?

Q3-3: SkinTan's top five customers generate sales revenue of £950,000 per annum. Each generates a different gross margin as a consequence of price negotiations that have been carried out over several years. Because of their location, each customer incurs different distribution expenses. Sales commissions are paid at the rate of 6% on all sales. Fixed costs are customer specific, covering salaries of sales and office staff who service each customer. The following table shows the information for each of the top customers for the previous year.

Carry out a customer profitability analysis and make recommendations in relation to any future strategies SkinTan should take in relation to its top customers.