Your firm has been appointed for the first time to carry out the audit of ZZZ Construction, a small construction firm in Muscat, for the year ending December 31, 2019. Sarooj Construction has been in operations for the last five years. It was doing well on the first two years but competition affected the business and they started to struggle from the third year up to this year, their fifth year in operation. As part of knowing the business, you communicated with their previous auditor. Your communication revealed that previous test of controls done indicated material weakness in the cash receipts from customers and disbursement for expenses. As the business is small, zzz Construction was not able to build stability and has been facing continuous losses since last year. The owner has been trying hard to improve the situation. He hired a manager who has been given wide powers for hiring and firing the staff and make all significant business decisions. The owner is aware that weak financial position will prevent the company from obtaining financial assistance from banks especially now that they need it. Furthermore, the owner is considering creating an internal audit department to improve their internal control. The owner expects to receive a report on weaknesses on the design and implementation of internal controls on top of the usual audit of financial statements.
Required: Discuss matters that you would consider in developing the audit strategy for ZZZ Construction.
Write the answers by using computers and should be equal or more than 300 words.

The Walt Disney Company is planning to add a new rollercoaster to its park in Anaheim, California. The cost to purchase and build this rollercoaster will be $12,000,000 and will cost $80,000 in maintenance every year. Disney will also assign staff to organize lines and guide visitors through these rollercoasters. The salary of the staff is expected to be $100,000 every 6 months. After 10 years of operation, the rollercoaster equipment needs to be remodeled at a cost of $1,000,000. During remodeling, it will be unavailable to visitors for 6 months. The rollercoaster will be operational for another 9.5 years, after which it will be considered obsolete. Its estimated salvage value at that time is $1,500,000.

The management of the Disneyland estimates that the rollercoaster will attract 20,000 people in the first six months of operation, and that this figure will grow by 3% per semester (6 months). Assume that during the major upgrade, the number of additional visitors is zero and that the number of visitors after the rollercoaster starts again is the same number as immediately before the major upgrade (the growth rate remains 3%). The benefit per visitor is $10.50 and the interest rate is 7% per year compounded semi- annually.

a) Draw the cash-flow diagram.

b) What is the benefit (in today’s $$) of this investment?

c) What is the cost to Walt Disney company (in today’s $$)?

d) Determine the benefit-cost ratio. Should the Walt Disney management pursue the investment?

e) In case the management should not pursue it, what would be the minimum required benefit per visitor such that the investment can be considered profitable?

THESE IS ALL THE INFORMATION NECESSARY TO COMPLETE THE PROBLEM. THERE IS NO OTHER NECESSARY INFO

Samuelson and Messenger (SAM) began 2021 with 250 units of its one product. These units were purchased near the end of 2020 for $24 each. During the month of January, 125 units were purchased on January 8 for $27 each and another 250 units were purchased on January 19 for $29 each. Sales of 170 units and 130 units were made on January 10 and January 25, respectively. There were 325 units on hand at the end of the month. SAM uses a perpetual inventory system.

Required:
1. Complete the below table to calculate ending inventory and cost of goods sold for January using FIFO.
2. Complete the below table to calculate ending inventory and cost of goods sold for January using average cost.
  

Database

You have just started a new position on the database design staff at Gizmonic Consultants, Inc.

Your first project is to translate the database requirements for Continental Hotels into an ER representation. In the next project, you will derive a relational schema from an ER diagram and implement the schema, populate it, and query over it.

Requirements:

Develop an ERD to capture the entities and relationships specified in the requirements documentation below. Use only the conventions covered in class.

1. Show keys [partial keys] for each entity [weak entity].
2. Give cardinality (1:1, 1:m, m:n) and participation constraints (partial, total) for each binary relationship.
3. Your whole ERD should not be more than one page in length, although you can show complete attributes in a separate diagram and just keys/partial keys on the main diagram.
4. You should have at least 4 entities and you may have quite a few relationships between them.
5. Keep a list of assumptions that represent any modeling decisions you have to make.
   • Your assumptions should not contradict any information given in the requirements, and you should strive to make as few additional assumptions as possible.
   • Anything you model that is not explicitly stated in the requirements should be stated in your assumptions.

Phase 2

1. Submit one well-formed, consensus ER diagram using Dia with the ER sheet that satisfies the requirements
2. A list of your design decisions (any additional assumptions beyond what is given explicitly in the problem). Organize your assumptions in 3 categories:
   1. related to primary keys,
   2. related to cardinality/participation constraints for relationships, and
   3. miscellaneous (anything else).
3. Translation of the team ERD into RDB tables using the algorithm and conventions

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Continental Hotels Requirements

• General Description

Continental Hotels is a chain of hotels that operates in several cities. There are currently 10 locations, and each hotel has about 100 guest rooms. The rooms are normally 80% occupied, with an average length of stay of three days. The hotels are frequented by both business travelers and vacationers. The chain is expanding to additional locations. The current guestroom reservation system is slow and unreliable and a new system is needed to handle reservations and associated guest billing.

• Basic Operations

Guests normally use the chain’s website to make a room reservation, supplying the dates requested, the number of guests, the number of rooms needed, and the area desired. The site shows the locations that have availability for the dates requested that are in the desired area. The user then chooses a location and a summary of the available rooms for that site is displayed, showing a brief description of the room type and the standard rate for each available room. Locations have unique names like “Columbus Downtown” and “Cincinnati North.”

The user can see a more detailed description of each room by clicking on a button. The user has the option to request a special rate due to membership in a group, military status, or age. The list of available rooms and their cost is updated to reflect the discounted price, if any. The chain also offers a rewards program for frequent guests. The website allows the user to enter or retrieve his or her membership number and password, and the site displays the number of rewards points the user has accumulated.

Whether the user belongs to the rewards program or not, he or she can reserve up to three rooms, and must choose a room type and accept the cost for each one from the list displayed, as well as entering the number of the proposed occupants and any special requests for each room, from a menu of special requests. The customer provides a credit card number to guarantee the reservation, and may choose to use some or all of his or her rewards points, if any, towards the cost of the rooms.

At the conclusion of the process, a confirmation number is assigned for the reservation. If a customer prefers, this same process can be done by telephone or even by mail.

A customer can cancel a reservation up to the day before he or she is due to check in with no penalty. If the customer does not cancel and is a no-show, the room cost(s) for one day will be charged to the credit card account provided in the reservation. A fictitious room number (-1) is used for this purpose. In addition to reservations, the hotel can accommodate walk-in guests, provided there are rooms available. In that case the customer information is taken, and a reservation is made for the same day for the period desired. Guests can also extend their stays past the reserved date, provided there are rooms available. The ending date of the current reservation is updated accordingly.

When a guest checks in with or without a reservation, guest IDs are checked, rooms are assigned, and an imprint of the credit card that will be used for billing is taken. If separate bills are requested for rooms at check-in, additional credit card imprints are taken, and basic information about the credit card holder, who is now considered the customer holding a reservation for that room, is taken. Miscellaneous charges for such items as room service, meals in the hotel restaurants or coffee shop, movie rentals, and telephone calls, as well as the basic room charges, will be billed to the credit card account for each associated room. Guests can access their room account information to see a summary of the charges for each room each day. At the end of the stay, guests are requested to fill out an evaluation form for each room, either on paper or online.

• Information Needs

Some of the reports that the system should be able to produce include the following, for each of the hotels in the chain:

Guest Bill – This should include, for each room:

Invoice number, room number, guest name, guest address, guest telephone, credit card number, number of persons. For each day of the stay, it should show the date, room charge, room tax, and a list of additional charges - room service charges (date, time, amount), hotel restaurant charges (restaurant name, date, time, amount), telephone charges (date, number called, length, cost) and any other items. At the end of the bill, the total charges, any discount for rewards points, and the total paid or charged to the credit card are given. If additional charges are found once the guest has checked out, a revised bill is prepared and sent to the guest.

Weekly Room Utilization Report – This report is normally produced at the end of each week, showing the utilization of rooms during the week. Note that some of the hotel’s guest rooms may not be available for rental because of damages, renovations, or other reasons. For each day, the report shows date, number of rooms available to be rented, number occupied, number unoccupied, number of rooms reserved, number of no-shows, number of walk-ins.

At the bottom of the report, the totals of each of these numbers for the week is shown.

Housekeeping Daily Room Requests Report – A report is created daily showing any special requests for guests who are checking in that day or who are already registered that must be filled by the housekeeping staff, such as extra pillows, rollaway beds, and so forth.

Daily Checkout Report - The report lists the rooms that will be vacated that day so that the housekeeping staff can prepare them for new guests after current guests depart.

• Query Checklist

□ List all the hotels (names) in the Cincinnati area.

□ List all the areas that do not have a hotel with a room with the type “queen size, handicapped accessible.”

□   List names of guests who watched the movie “Buckaroo Banzai” at any hotel.

□   List names of guests who were charged for a no-show reservation and who have a rewards membership.

□   List the sum of all miscellaneous charges by guest name and room number at the “Downtown Columbus” hotel in June 2019.

Pretend for a minute that you are advising your candidate for President of the USA. As you near your first debate against your opposing party nominee, you realize that economic growth is going to be a main topic.

The catch is that you are not going to be debating war, health care, etc. You are restricted to showing who did a better job growing our economy and can only use GDP. You can use variations of GDP, like GDP per capita, percentage change in GDP, GDP compared to another nation, etc.

Now think you are the Republican Advisor, t demonstrate how economic growth was superior under President Trump (2017-present).

Keep in mind that you do not need to use the entire term of their presidency to make your point. For instance, perhaps you feel that President Bush is responsible for GDP growth in 2009 due to his actions in term. Similarly President Obama may be responsible for some of the growth under President Trump.

Your job is to write up a short analysis using historic GDP, to support your candidate in answering who is better at creating economics growth, Republicans or Democrats.

MERCOSUR is a free trade block, with current member countries including Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. The Bravo Luggage Company is a Latin American firm based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Bravo has seen a sharp increase in orders over the last few months and needs to increase the amount of material purchased. Currently, the materials used to manufacture Bravo luggage come from suppliers in Paraguay. Bravo managers have been approached by suppliers from Mexico and China who are both offering very competitive prices on materials.

1. Which of the following questions would be most important for Bravo managers to evaluate when determining which supplier to use?

A) How will using non-South American material affect the Bravo brand name?

B) What other MERCOSUR nations sell leather and fabric supplies for luggage?

C) What will be the total cost of materials shipped from Paraguay, Mexico, and China?

D) Are other countries planning to join MERCOSUR in the near future?

2. Which of the following best supports using a supplier from Paraguay over a supplier from Mexico or China?

A) MERCOSUR members agree to use exporters from other MERCOSUR nations.

B) The Mexican supplier is in closer proximity to Bravo than the Chinese supplier.

C) Mexican and Chinese suppliers would pay the same tariff to export to Argentina.

D) Bravo could avoid tariffs because Paraguay is a member of MERCOSUR.

3. Which of the following should be considered when making the decision to use a MERCOSUR supplier or a non-MERCOSUR supplier?

A) Will the additional tariffs charged on non-MERCOSUR supplier offset the cost savings?

B) Do other MERCOSUR nations use outside suppliers?

C) What percentage of tariffs will Argentina receive?

D) How will Bravo managers handle the free trade area?

4. If the material prices from the Chinese and Mexican suppliers are both competitive enough to cover up the additional tariffs, which of the following should be most considered when choosing between the Chinese and Mexican supplier?

A) will Mexico join MERCOSUR in the future?

B) is China a member of the WTO?

C) which supplier requires higher transportation cost?

D) all of the above

How likely do you think it is that self-service will become the dominant mode of customer problem resolution in the near or distant future? Support your answer with facts and examples from the text.

What are the different methods used to show a function is equal to its Taylor series near its center. In particular discuss Taylor’s inequality and how it can be used. Give a detailed example.

What factors influence a firm’s choice between (i) home production & exporting, (ii) direct foreign investment to set up a factory near customers, and (iii) licencing a foreign producer.

Discuss how dress code standards for health care companies have changed over the years. Identify some of the current standards that you believe will change in the near future and explain why.