Overview:

To be successful, all businesses must perform periodic assessments to determine the efficiency of operations. Whether you are an owner, a manager, or a frontline employee, at some time you will be affected by a budget. Preparing a budget and analyzing the results of operations in relation to the budget will help you understand how to use financial information to evaluate the effectiveness of an organization's operations. The process will also help you determine the reasons operations do not always go as planned and make decisions on changes that might need to be made to make the organization, or just your own department, more efficient.

In Part II of the summative assessment, you will use the worksheets and budget variance report you created in Part I to prepare a budget analysis communicating key findings to internal parties and suggesting potential changes to improve your organization's performance.

This assessment addresses the following course outcomes:

• Communicate budget planning to internal stakeholders for strategic planning
• Apply costing methods to production for supporting budget planning and decision making
• Analyze financial information in identifying opportunities for operational efficiencies
• Apply ethics within the accounting decision-making process for supporting responsible business activities

Prompt

You are a manager for a pet supplies manufacturer. This responsibility requires you to create budgets, make pricing decisions, and analyze the results of operations to determine if changes need to be made to make the company more efficient. Using the workbooks and budget variance report you created for Final Project Part I, you will make recommendations about possible changes. You will look at the possibility of making some components of one product instead of buying them, and you will determine how to evaluate the company as a whole and managers in particular. You will create a budget analysis detailing your findings.

Specifically, the following critical elements must be addressed in your analysis:

a) Budget Process and Variances

1. Discuss the initial budget process, the variances, and potential reasons for the variances.

2. What are the changes you think the company should make based on the variance analysis? What will the changes accomplish?

3. What are the ethical considerations of the changes you have selected? Why are you recommending these particular changes?

b) "Make" or "Buy": Suppose you were to consider buying a particular component of one of your products or making the product in-house.

1. What factors would you consider in such a "make" or "buy" decision?

2. What are the ethical considerations of your decision? What implications could this decision have?

3. For each option (i.e., to "make" or to "buy"), how will this impact the efficiencies of your operation?

c) Nonfinancial Performance Measures

1. What suggestions would you make for nonfinancial performance measures that the company should adopt? What are the pros and cons of each?

2. What are the ethical considerations of your suggestions? Explain the significance of each.