Question

It is very common, for program managers to have a portion of their bonus linked to program sales and specifically, how monthly sales match up with target monthly sales goals. Your supervisor, the program manager has explained to you the bonus calculation and has asked for your help. This months sales were amazing and your supervisor has asked you on the last day of the month to hold off entering your last 2 sales until the next day to "push" the sales into the next month. Since your sales and the department sales goals had been met, this would give you a jump start on meeting our goals for next month. What should you do?

Answer 1

You should not act on your program manager’s request and should not hold off entering your last 2 sales until the next day. This is because such an action will be unethical and wrong.

Holding off the entry of last two sales till the next day will lead to distorting the sales figures for this month and the next month as well. The program manager wants to do this as sales target for this month has been met and by entering last two sales next day these sales amount will be counted as next month’s sales and hence will provide a cushion for them to meet their targets.

However this is unethical and wrong as it is misrepresenting numbers. The last two sales belong to this month and hence pushing them to next month (even if it involves holding off the figures for just a day) is unethical, wrong and against the principles of accounting. It should be noted that as per principles of accounting revenues and costs should be recorded for the period to which they pertain.