• Individual task
• Students should provide a stock price fluctuation analysis of a publicly traded company , using the financial data available effecting the stock market.
• Key contextual elements should include the stock exchange market, stock market indexes e.g. the Standard &Poor’s 500 Index and the Dow Jones Industrial Average in the context of market forces and economic forces, that demonstrate a clear understanding of the learning objectives discussed in this course.
• Title page, Written Body, along with a Bibliography of any written references, images, or diagrams used (if applicable). NOTE: Formal Written Reports must include a Title Page, Table of Contents, and Appendix of Financial Statements.
• Formal Written Report saved and uploaded to Moodle in PDF format.

Formalities:

• Word count: 2000 words

Ariel Tax Services prepares tax returns for individual and corporate clients. As the company has gradually expanded to 10 offices, the founder, Max Jacobs, has begun to feel as though he is losing control of operations. In response to this concern, he has decided to implement a performance measurement system that will help control current operations and facilitate his plans of expanding to 20 offices.

Jacobs describes the keys to the success of his business as follows:

“Our only real asset is our people. We must keep our employees highly motivated and we must hire the 'cream of the crop.' Interestingly, employee morale and recruiting success are both driven by the same two factors—compensation and career advancement. In other words, providing superior compensation relative to the industry average coupled with fast-track career advancement opportunities keeps morale high and makes us a very attractive place to work. It drives a high rate of job offer acceptances relative to job offers tendered.”

“Hiring highly qualified people and keeping them energized ensures operational success, which in our business is a function of productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness. Productivity boils down to employees being billable rather than idle. Efficiency relates to the time required to complete a tax return. Finally, effectiveness is critical to our business in the sense that we cannot tolerate errors. Completing a tax return quickly is meaningless if the return contains errors.”

“Our growth depends on acquiring new customers through word-of-mouth from satisfied repeat customers. We believe that our customers come back year after year because they value error-free, timely, and courteous tax return preparation. Common courtesy is an important aspect of our business! We call it service quality, and it all ties back to employee morale in the sense that happy employees treat their clients with care and concern.”

“While sales growth is obviously important to our future plans, growth without a corresponding increase in profitability is useless. Therefore, we understand that increasing our profit margin is a function of cost-efficiency as well as sales growth. Given that payroll is our biggest expense, we must maintain an optimal balance between staffing levels and the revenue being generated. As I alluded to earlier, the key to maintaining this balance is employee productivity. If we can achieve cost-efficient sales growth, we should eventually have 20 profitable offices!”

Required:

Create a balanced scorecard for Ariel Tax Services. Link your scorecard measures using the framework from Exhibit 9–5. Indicate whether each measure is expected to increase or decrease.

Flint Company uses the LCNRV method, on an individual-item basis, in pricing its inventory items. The inventory at December 31, 2017, consists of products D, E, F, G, H, and I. Relevant per unit data for these products appear below. Item D Item E Item F Item G Item H Item I Estimated selling price $126 $116 $100 $95 $116 $95 Cost 79 84 84 84 53 38 Cost to complete 32 32 26 37 32 32 Selling costs 11 19 11 21 11 21 Using the LCNRV rule, determine the proper unit value for balance sheet reporting purposes at December 31, 2017, for each of the inventory items above. Item D $ Item E $ Item F $ Item G $ Item H $ Item I $

John’s Custom Computer Shop (JCCS) assembles computers for both individual and corporate customers. The company is organized into two divisions: Personal and Business. Once a computer is built, it is shipped to the customer. Billing for all customers is handled by the corporate Accounts Receivable Department. Accounts Receivable performs two major activities: billing and dispute resolution. Billing refers to preparing and sending the bills as well as processing the payments. Dispute resolution occurs when a customer refuses to pay, usually due to an error in billing.

The costs of the Accounts Receivable Department are allocated to the two divisions based on the number of bills prepared. Kyle, the manager of the Business division, has complained that the allocated costs from Accounts Receivable are beginning to make the business division look unprofitable and has asked you to recommend some changes to the allocation system. If he agrees with your recommendation, he will pass them on to the chief financial officer.

Data on costs and activities in the Accounts Receivable Department follow.

The Accounts Receivable Department incurred the following costs during the year.

Required:

a. Under the current allocation system, what is the cost that will be allocated from Accounts Receivable to Personal? To Business?

Allocated Costs: Personal? Business?

b. Suppose the company implements an activity-based cost system for Accounts Receivable with two activities, billing and dispute resolution. What is the cost that will be allocated from Accounts Receivable to Personal? To Business? Use the number of bills prepared as the cost driver for billing costs and the number of disputes for dispute resolution costs.

Billing for Personal? Billing for Business?

Dispute Resolution for Personal? Dispute Resolution for Business?

Managerial Decision Making Research and Analysis Focus of the Final Paper Research a specific company of your choice and identify some of the managerial decisions that were made over time and in response to changes in its market or competitive environment. Use the Ashford University Library and web-based sources for your research. At least three external scholarly sources must be used in addition to the textbook.

Address all of the following areas: Describe the company and provide a brief history of its operations. Find or use graphs to illustrate its financial performance over the years. Describe any sources of risk or uncertainty in its operations. Do the financial reports indicate risky or uncertain activities or changes to the economic environment that ultimately appear to have affected the company

Trident, which is US based company, has many subsidiaries in different countries, such as England, Germany, China etc. Trident Germany, which is one of the foreign subsidiaries of Trident Parent Company, manufactures in Germany, sells domestically and exports and all sales are invoiced in euro. Trident Germany will be affected by the unexpected change in the value of US dollar and euro, the currency of the economic consequence for the German subsidiary. Trident Germany’s baseline assumptions are given as:

Suppose that on January, 1, 2015, before any commercial activity begins, the euro unexpectedly depreciates from $1.20/€ to $1.12/€. To illustrate the effect of different scenarios on the Trident Germany’s operating exposure, consider two cases;

Case 1: Depreciation, no change in any variable - The euro unexpectedly depreciates from $1.20/€ to $1.12/€. There is no change in Net Working Capital.

Case 2: Increase in sales volume, other variables remain constant – Assume that the depreciation of the euro will result in the sales increase by 40%, to 1,400,000. There is an increase of €203,397 in Net Working Capital.

1. Calculate the present value of the operating cash flows for Case 1.
2. Calculate the present value of the operating cash flows for Case 2.
3. Summarize the impact of the depreciation of the euro in the Trident Germany’s present value.

4.14 A survey conducted by the Northwestern University Lindquist-Endicott Report asked 320 companies about the procedures they use in hiring. Only 54% of the responding companies review the applicant’s college transcript as part of the hiring process, and only 44% consider faculty references.Assume that these percentages are true for the population of companies in the United States and that 35% of all companies use both the applicant’s college transcript and faculty references. a. What is the probability that a randomly selected company uses either faculty references or college transcript as part of the hiring process? b. What is the probability that a randomly selected company uses either faculty references or college transcript but not both as part of the hiring process? c. What is the probability that a randomly selected company uses neither faculty references nor college transcript as part of the hiring process? d. Construct a probability matrix for this problem and indicate the locations of your answers for parts (a), (b), and (c) on the matrix.

4.18 A survey conducted by the Northwestern University Lindquist-Endicott Report asked 320 companies about the procedures they use in hiring. Only 54% of the responding companies review the applicant’s college transcript as part of the hiring process, and only 44% consider faculty references. Assume that these percentages are true for the population of companies in the United States and that 35% of all companies use both the applicant’s college transcript and faculty references. a. What is the probability that a randomly selected company uses either faculty references or college transcript as part of the hiring process? b. What is the probability that a randomly selected company uses either faculty references or college transcript but not both as part of the hiring process? c. What is the probability that a randomly selected company uses neither faculty references nor college transcript as part of the hiring process? d. Construct a probability matrix for this problem and indicate the locations of your answers for parts (a), (b), and (c) on the matrix.

Use the article excerpt below to determine whether the following 2 statements are correct or incorrect. For incorrect statements, you must use one sentence to explain why or re-write the statement to make it correct.

"U.S. teen students slip in global rankings- U.S. 15-year-olds made no progress on recent international achievement exams and fell further in the rankings. The results from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which are being released on Tuesday, show that teenagers in the U.S. slipped from 25th to 31st in math since 2009 and from 11th to 21st in reading."

2) Results of the PISA study support the conclusion that the growth of GDP per capita in the US will decelerate because physical capital per worker has increased.

3) Results of the PISA study support the conclusion that the quality of education in the US relative to other participating countries has declined, and that may come to reduce US relative labor productivity in the future.