The Quarterly Sales Report Essay

Management should note that the level of activity was above what had been planned for the month. This led to an expected increase in profits of $1,100. However, the individual items on the report should not receive much management attention. The favorable variance for revenue and the unfavorable variances for expenses are entirely caused by the increase in activity.

Question 5: Which type of variation was critical to resolving the realized revenue case study?

On the morning of January 17, 1993, before the annual buying trip to Germany for the 1993 Christmas season, the toy buyer for the chain of Hightower Department Stores named Julia Brown was reviewing the performance of some models of stuffed animals tested for sales during 1992. Every time Julia’s on the trip, she would buy some stuffed animals for testing. Fifty was the minimum amount the manufacturers require. Based on Julia’s years of buying experience, the tested result would give Julia a clear estimation about how many new stuffed animals she needed to order. Figure 1 in below shows the timeline of how Julia buys the toys for the company:

Thank you for the opportunity to assess your sales data in order to provide recommendations for increasing your sales. The analysis and recommendations below are based on the data you provided, which covers a period from May 2004 through June 2006. The analysis below is based on this data alone. Therefore, our recommendations should be tempered by your knowledge of business realities and your market. Please let us know if we can answer any questions concerning the analysis or the recommendations provided.

I think it is obvious in the previous years that the amount the company spends on advertising has a direct effect on the number of sales. According to the projected number of units that are expected to be sold, the company is expecting an increase from 3,400 in year 8 to 3510 in year 9. This is a considerable increase because of the fact that in year 7, there were 4,000 units sold, and in year 8 we saw this drop to 3,400.

I was pretty confident that our sales would justify the additional office and salary expense. However, as I looked at the pro forma statements it became very apparent that the sales force would sell more unit than the plant could produce. In hindsight, I should have increase production in Quarter 2 so I could keep up with future sales in Quarter 4. As a result, I did not hire new sales people but I fine tuned my advertising by copying my competitors and increased the advertising budget from $198,598 to $311,897. The pro forma income statement showed total revenues at $8,280,065 which was jump from $6,888,870. My operating profit also increased from $1,104,794 to $1,658,769. I was content with the slow but steady growth.

While it is true that Ms. Forthright had always exceeded her budgeted sales, the extent to which she diverts away from the managers projections does not necessarily means that she is violating honesty and integrity. Her decision on what her budgeted sales for the year is highly relevant to the data available to her. Her projections tends to lie between the field manager and the marketing manager’s predictions, which can be reasonable because in the past years, the field manager’s projections tend to be over what the actual sales of the year will be.

Thank you for the opportunity to assess your sales data in order to provide recommendations for increasing your sales. The analysis and recommendations below are based on the data you provided, which covers a period from May 2004 through June 2006. The analysis below is based on this data alone. Therefore, our recommendations should be tempered by your knowledge of business realities and your market. Please let us know if we can answer any questions concerning the analysis or the recommendations provided.

Note 9, page 216, states that Harnischfeger decreased its R&D expense in 1984 relative to the previous two years. Do you think this change was motivated by business considerations or accounting considerations? How did this change affect the company’s reported profits in 1984?

2. Considering your answer to item 1, the first three exhibits, and related introductory discussion, is it likely that the accounting system may distort product profit significantly? Why? (Ignore general, selling, and admin expense.)

One of the key issues faced by McGraw is that there is a large gap between his projections for next year, and what the manager’s are promising him . His goal is to obtain a 15% increase in the operating income from his division (OM, LR and NP). The managers are projecting a decrease of 5.2% from the current year. In absolute terms there is a gap of $27 MM in the projected divisions operating income.

The company started off producing 20,000 units of mountain bikes. We did not change the production quantity. Last year our forecast sales were 24,000 when we only sold 19,866; therefore we thought it would be best to leave production at 20,000 bikes. Having excess inventory, we concluded that 20,000 units should be enough considering our quality has not changed and our advertising will not increase the sales dramatically. Although we had the choice to produce as much as 30,000 units, we felt as though we did not have sufficient money to increase production. We were interested in allocating the money towards marketing as opposed to production. We realized that without awareness, no matter how many units we make, sales would be inefficient.

The personal selling process is a continuously revolving cycle of stages that assist the professional sales person of today in developing basic selling strategies and tactics that help them improve and prefect their own personal selling styles. As listed in the text, “there are countless small tasks in the personal selling process that are generally organized into seven major stages that overlap and interact which are:

In the case “Rusty and Dusty Slow Movers,” Penny is the first Controller hired at a medium-sized farm machinery company. One of her initial goals as a controller is to determine how accurately the inventory on the books reflects its fair market value. The company acquired and repossessed equipment that is hard to sell, and she noticed that there were many dusty machines when she checked inventory pallets. Ron, the inventory control clerk, informed her that most are either from overruns or the recession. Moreover, when the inventory sells, it is sold at a significant discount. Penny discussed the matter with Art, the Company President. Art told her that he believed that many of these items are sellable given appropriate marketing and the right economic conditions. He does not want to write-down the inventory because he is concerned it will negatively impact the profit. Art has indicated that she should help falsify records if it looks like auditors could discover the slow moving inventory.

What is the one thing that all for-profit companies have in common? They must generate sales of their products or services to survive. In order to accomplish this, most companies have a team of sales representatives driving themselves and each other to win the confidence of clients. But just like every sports team needs a coach, every sales team needs a strong and knowledgeable Sales Manager to be successful.