Selzik Company makes super-premium cake mixes that go through two processing departments—Blending and Packaging. The following activity was recorded in the Blending Department during July:
| Production data: | |||
| Units in process, July 1 (materials 100% complete; conversion 30% complete) | 10,000 | ||
| Units started into production | 170,000 | ||
| Units in process, July 31 (materials 100% complete; conversion 40% complete) | 20,000 | ||
| Cost data: | |||
| Work in process inventory, July 1: | |||
| Materials cost | $ | 8,500 | |
| Conversion cost | $ | 4,900 | |
| Cost added during the month: | |||
| Materials cost | $ | 139,400 | |
| Conversion cost | $ | 244,200 | |
All materials are added at the beginning of work in the Blending Department. The company uses the FIFO method in its process costing system.
Required:
1. Calculate the Blending Department's equivalent units of production for materials and conversion for July.
2. Calculate the Blending Department's cost per equivalent unit for materials and conversion for July.
3. Calculate the Blending Department's cost of ending work in process inventory for materials, conversion, and in total for July.
4. Calculate the Blending Department's cost of units transferred out to the next department for materials, conversion, and in total for July.
5. Prepare a cost reconciliation report for the Blending Department for July.
In: Accounting
Forever Mart (FM) has a Kaizen (continuous improvement) approach to budgeting activity area costs for each month of 2019. Each successive month, the budgeted cost driver rate decreases by 0.2% relative to the preceding month (so, for example, February's budgeted cost driver rate is 0.998 times January's budgeted cost driver rate, and March's budgeted cost driver rate is 0.998 times the budgeted February 2019 rate). FM assumes that the budgeted amount of cost driver usage remains the same each month.
|
January 2019 |
January 2019 Budgeted |
||||
|
Budgeted |
Amount of Cost Driver Used |
||||
|
Cost Driver |
Soft |
Fresh |
Packaged |
||
|
Activity |
Cost Driver |
Rate |
Drinks |
Produce |
Food |
|
Ordering |
Number of purchase orders |
$99.00 |
14 |
21 |
14 |
|
Delivery |
Number of deliveries |
$86.00 |
13 |
69 |
18 |
|
Shelf-stocking |
Hours of stocking time |
$27.00 |
16 |
175 |
90 |
|
Custmer supprt |
Number of items sold |
$0.18 |
4,800 |
34,900 |
10,750 |
Required
|
1. |
What is the total budgeted cost for each activity and the total
budgeted indirect cost for March
2019? |
|
2. |
What are the benefits of using a Kaizen approach to budgeting? What are the limitations of this approach, and how might FM management overcome them? |
In: Accounting
Selzik Company makes super-premium cake mixes that go through two processing departments—Blending and Packaging. The following activity was recorded in the Blending Department during July: Production data: Units in process, July 1 (materials 100% complete; conversion 30% complete) 10,000 Units started into production 170,000 Units in process, July 31 (materials 100% complete; conversion 40% complete) 20,000 Cost data: Work in process inventory, July 1: Materials cost $ 8,500 Conversion cost $ 4,900 Cost added during the month: Materials cost $ 139,400 Conversion cost $ 244,200 All materials are added at the beginning of work in the Blending Department. The company uses the FIFO method in its process costing system. Required: 1. Calculate the Blending Department's equivalent units of production for materials and conversion for July. 2. Calculate the Blending Department's cost per equivalent unit for materials and conversion for July. 3. Calculate the Blending Department's cost of ending work in process inventory for materials, conversion, and in total for July. 4. Calculate the Blending Department's cost of units transferred out to the next department for materials, conversion, and in total for July. 5. Prepare a cost reconciliation report for the Blending Department for July.
In: Accounting
Selzik Company makes super-premium cake mixes that go through two processing departments—Blending and Packaging. The following activity was recorded in the Blending Department during July:
| Production data: | |||
| Units in process, July 1 (materials 100% complete; conversion 30% complete) | 10,000 | ||
| Units started into production | 170,000 | ||
| Units in process, July 31 (materials 100% complete; conversion 40% complete) | 20,000 | ||
| Cost data: | |||
| Work in process inventory, July 1: | |||
| Materials cost | $ | 8,500 | |
| Conversion cost | $ | 4,900 | |
| Cost added during the month: | |||
| Materials cost | $ | 139,400 | |
| Conversion cost | $ | 244,200 | |
All materials are added at the beginning of work in the Blending Department. The company uses the FIFO method in its process costing system.
Required:
1. Calculate the Blending Department's equivalent units of production for materials and conversion for July.
2. Calculate the Blending Department's cost per equivalent unit for materials and conversion for July.
3. Calculate the Blending Department's cost of ending work in process inventory for materials, conversion, and in total for July.
4. Calculate the Blending Department's cost of units transferred out to the next department for materials, conversion, and in total for July.
5. Prepare a cost reconciliation report for the Blending Department for July.
In: Accounting
This is Cost Accounting, I asked this question before, and when according to my professor some of the answers were not correct, can you help me with this question please, thanks
Decision Making – Equipment Replacement
Mathews manages an assembly facility of Orthom Scientific. A supplier approaches Mathews about replacing a large piece of manufacturing equipment that Orthom uses in its process with a more efficient model. While the supplier made some compelling arguments in favor of replacing the 3-year-old equipment, Mathews is hesitant. Mathews is hoping to be promoted next year to manager of the larger plant near Orthom’s headquarters, and he knows that the accrual-basis net operating income of the assembly plant he manages will be evaluated closely as part of the promotion decision. The following information is available concerning the equipment replacement decision:
The historic cost of the old machine is $600,000. It has a
current book value of $240,000, two remaining years of useful life,
and a market value of $144,000. Annual depreciation expense is
$120,000. It is expected to have a salvage value of $0 at the end
of its useful life.
The new equipment will cost $360,000. It will have a 2-year useful
life and a $0 salvage value. Orthom uses straight-line depreciation
on all equipment.
The new equipment will reduce electricity costs by $70,000 per year
and will reduce direct manufacturing labor costs by $60,000 per
year.
For simplicity, ignore income taxes and the time value of money.
Required:
Assume that Mathews’ priority is to receive the promotion and he
makes the equipment replacement decision based on next year’s
accrual-based net operating income. Which alternative would he
choose? Show your calculations.
What are the relevant factors in the decision? Which alternative is
in the best interest of the company over the next 2 years? Show
your calculations.
At what cost would Mathews be willing to purchase the new
equipment? Explain.
In: Accounting
In: Economics
Develop an economic feasibility analysis, using payback analysis, ROI, and present value (assume a discount rate of 10%) using the table below
|
System in place |
In-House System |
Vertical Software |
|
|
Year 1 |
6 hours overtime total $6,480 per employee Support Staff 7 People Plus, new staff member |
12 weeks, hourly salary $35 total $16,800 Commercial package $2,500 10 hrs. weekly training $4200 4 hrs. weekly maintenance $22.5 total of 4,320 Hardware Cost $12,500 |
Vertical package $12,000 4 weeks to install $5,600 10hrs weekly training $4,200 Free Support first year 4 hrs. weekly maintenance $22.5 total of 4,320 Hardware Cost $12,500 |
|
Year 2 |
6 hours overtime total $6,480 per employee |
4 hrs. weekly maintenance $22.5 total of 4,320 |
Technical Support $600 4 hrs. weekly maintenance $22.5 total of 4,320 |
|
Year 3 |
6 hours overtime total $6,480 per employee |
4 hrs. weekly maintenance $22.5 total of 4,320 |
Technical Support $600 4 hrs. weekly maintenance $22.5 total of 4,320 |
|
Year 4 |
6 hours overtime total $6,480 per employee |
4 hrs. weekly maintenance $22.5 total of 4,320 |
Technical Support $600 4 hrs. weekly maintenance $22.5 total of 4,320 |
|
Year 5 |
6 hours overtime total $6,480 per employee |
4 hrs. weekly maintenance $22.5 total of 4,320 |
Technical Support $600 4 hrs. weekly maintenance $22.5 total of 4,320 |
|
Total |
$259,200 |
$57,600 |
$58,300 |
|
Saved in 5 years |
$201,600 |
$200,900 |
In: Finance
Questions:
5) What are the advantages and disadvantages to countries that promote frontier tourism?
6) Discuss how nations can create a competitive advantage in attracting tourists.
Roughing It: Tourists Are Boldly Going Into African Trouble Spots
A conservationist in oil-rich Gabon leads the way in promoting tiny nation’s sur ing hippopotamuses and other natural attractions, as part of a regional push for tourism amid instability
By Alexandra Wexler
Oct. 19, 2018 5 30 a.m. ET
WONGA WONGUE, Gabon—For the past decade, an energetic conservationist has been building the foundations for a tourism industry in Gabon, where rare forest elephants stroll down the beach, hippopotamuses surf in the ocean waves and blue-faced mandrills march by the thousands through the jungle.
The challenges for Gabon’s national parks authority and its head, Lee White, include transporting clients to remote camps in a country with little infrastructure, recruiting pygmy trackers from deep within the jungle and training antipoaching units who have to battle armed hunters and illegal gold miners in one of the world’s most pristine stretches of wilderness.
Over the past decade, with the support of government and overseas philanthropists, Mr. White has transformed Gabon’s parks authority from a group with just 100 staff with a budget of $500,000 to a $30 million operation with 800 employees, 175 cars, 35 boats and a number of aircraft, including a helicopter. Tourists have begun to arrive, with visitors up by a third this year through July compared with the average over the same period in 2017 at the country’s most-popular national park for international tourists.
Mr. White’s Gabonese gambit is at the leading edge of a trend attracting a growing list of African economies: frontier-tourism products in places that visitors often more-closely associate with conflict or instability.
In recent years, a small but swelling segment of the tourism market has been drawn to places like Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Virunga National Park, which was recently closed after two British tourists were kidnapped and their ranger killed, and war-torn Central African Republic. Tour operator Thomas Cook Group PLC recently sent a delegation to Sierra Leone, which has struggled with civil war and more recently an Ebola epidemic, to discuss offering package tours.
“There is a trend recently of interest in ‘unexplored’ places,” said André Rodrigues Aquino, a senior natural-resources management specialist at the World Bank, who advises African
governments on their tourism sector. “It’s very linked to nature, places that have pristine unspoiled nature.”
The numbers are small compared with sub-Saharan Africa’s broader tourism market of $43.7 billion in 2017, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council. But countries with the strongest growth in international arrivals in 2016 compared with a year earlier were Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Eritrea and Togo, according to the African Development Bank.
“A lot of people who have traveled previously, particularly in Africa, are looking for different experiences in different places,” said Peter Fearnhead, chief executive of African Parks, a nongovernmental organization that manages 15 national parks in partnership with governments across Africa. “The fact that [these places are] so edgy, we’re finding that there’s an increasing interest.”
The niche but expanding market for frontier tourism in fractious security environments has governments and companies seeking to balance revenue potential against the investments and know-how needed to ensure safety.
Oil-rich Gabon, a sparsely-populated country the size of Colorado on Africa’s Atlantic seaboard, has one of the highest per-capita incomes in sub-Saharan Africa and is one of the more stable countries in the continent’s central region. But when Mr. White took the reins of the country’s newly created national-parks agency in 2009, the vast nature reserves that cover about 20% of the country existed essentially only on paper.
= “The first priority when I was appointed was to manage the parks and when necessary, defend them,” Mr. White said. He created antipoaching units and armed rapid-response teams to push, with much success, ivory poachers out of the parks.
There are exceptions. Parks officers have had two gunbattles with illegal gold miners in a park called Birougou in the past six months, Mr. White said.
At Zakouma, a national park in the desert nation of Chad, poachers had massacred about 90% of the park’s elephants by the time African Parks took over its management in 2010. Since then, the group has transformed the region into a haven for one of Africa’s largest single herds, now about 560 elephants strong. By establishing flights to link the park with Chad’s capital city— and joining with a group of private guides as part of the marketing strategy—the park’s revenue is expected to be just under a $1 million this year, up from about $50,000 in 2015.
The mobile-tented safari experience that African Parks offers is booked about 18 months in advance, but it takes a maximum of just eight guests at a time and is limited to the dry season.
“It’s not a sustainable solution for the park,” said Stuart Slabbert, head of conservation-led economic development for African Parks.
Experts say national parks across the continent will struggle to expand their tourism revenue without a cooperative and supportive government.
In Gabon, Mr. White’s plans have been aided by his close relationship with current President Ali Bongo Ondimba, established while his father, Omar Bongo Ondimba, was still in power. Though Gabon is
theoretically a democracy, the elder Mr. Bongo ruled for 42 years and the current president, who took over when he died in 2009, won close, tense elections in 2016 marred by accusations of fraud that ignited countrywide rioting.
This year, Mr. White began actively marketing safari-type trips to the parks for the first time. Possible sightings include sea turtles hatching on the country’s beaches, humpback whales breaching in the surf and Western lowland gorillas lazing while their babies climb and swing around trees: a literal jungle gym.
“It’s not savanna tourism. You have to work to see this stuff,“ said Michael Nichols, a photographer who took a picture of Gabon’s surfing hippos that Time magazine calls one of the 100 most influential images of all time. “That doesn’t preclude that it’s frigging unbelievable. It could be like the Amazon.”
In: Operations Management
1. Define the term constraints and give an example. What product should be made first when resource constraints exist?
2. True or false. When deciding whether to accept a special order, managers need to consider whether they have available excess capacity.
3. True or false. Cost-plus price minus desired profit equals total cost.
4. True or false. Variable costs are irrelevant to a special decision when those variable costs differ between alternatives.
5. True or false. Companies operating in highly competitive industries are generally price-setters.
6. The benefit foregone by choosing a particular alternative course of action is referred to as a(n)
| a. incremental cost. |
| b. | opportunity cost. |
| c. | variable cost. |
| d. | sunk cost. |
7. A company's manager would consider which of the following in deciding whether to discontinue its electronics product line?
| a. How discontinuing the electronics product line would affect sales of its other products (like CDs) |
| b. | The costs it could save by discontinuing the product line |
| c. | The revenues it would lose from discontinuing the product line |
| d. | All of the above |
8. The factor that restricts production or sale of a product is which of the following?
| a. | Demanding factor |
| b. | Relevant factor |
| c. | Constraint |
| d. | Sunk factor |
9. The cost-plus price is described by which of the following?
| a. Total cost plus desired profit |
| b. | Revenue at market price plus desired profit |
| c. | Variable cost plus desired profit |
| d. | Target total cost plus desired profit |
10. Which of the following describes the products and services of companies that are price-setters?
| a. They tend to be commodities. |
| b. | They are priced by managers using a target-costing emphasis. |
| c. | They tend to have a lot of competitors. |
| d. | They tend to be unique. |
In: Accounting
Green Furniture (GF) manufactures a variety of furniture for household use and just two items for office use: desks and cabinets. The production process for desks and cabinets is similar, although machines must be retooled for each product. Both materials and labour costs are directly traceable to individual products; however, overhead is a common cost and allocated using direct labour-hours as the allocation base. GF’s accountant is considering the use of activity-based costing (ABC) and has suggested evaluating the system by applying it to the two office use products (desks and cabinets). The following data are available for a typical quarter.
| Activity Cost Pool | Activity Base | Activity Rate | Activity Usage | |||||||
| Desks | Cabinets | |||||||||
| Parts receipts | Number of parts | $ | 1.00 | per part | 1,500 | parts | 1,000 | parts | ||
| Machining | Machine-hours | $ | 15.00 | per machine-hour | 150 | machine-hours | 230 | machine-hours | ||
| Assembly | Units produced | $ | 1.20 | per unit | 750 | units | 1,000 | units | ||
| Quality control | Units tested | $ | 2.00 | per unit | 75 | units | 900 | units | ||
| Direct materials | $ | 3,750 | $ | 2,000 | ||||||
| Direct labour | $ | 9,000 | $ | 9,000 | ||||||
Each product consumed 450 direct labour-hours.
Required:
1. Determine the total manufacturing cost and cost per unit for each of the two product lines for the quarter, using activity-based costing to allocate overhead costs. (Round "Cost per unit" answers to 2 decimal places.)
| Dusters | Cabinets | |
| Total manufacturing cost | ||
| Cost per unit |
2. Redo the above using direct labour-hours as the allocation base. (Round "Cost per unit" answers to 2 decimal places.)
| Mops | Dusters | |
| Total manufacturing cost | ||
| Cost per unit |
In: Accounting