Assignment A2: Managing Financial Resources and Decisions
Assignment A2: Managing Financial Resources and Decisions
Assignment A2: Managing Financial Resources and Decisions
0 OF DANANG
UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS
CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION
Assignment A2
MANAGING FINANCIAL
RESOURCES AND
DECISIONS
Contents
I. Task A: ............................................................................................................ 2
1. Explain how budget can be a decision-making tool for businesses. ....... 2
2. Prepare a budgeted income statement for Printer Rite Ltd. ....................3
II. Task B: .............................................................................................................5
III. Task D:......................................................................................................... 8
2
I. Task A:
1. Explain how budget can be a decision-making
tool for businesses.
Budgeting is the process of creating a plan to spend your
money. This spending plan is called a budget. Creating this
spending plan allows you to determine in advance whether you
will have enough money to do the things you need to do or would
like to do. (my money coach). In addition, budgets are an
important source of information. They provide a system for
ensuring communication, co-ordination and control within an
organization (BPP, 180). Therefore, budget is seen as decision-
making tool for business. The management can base on the
budget to offer decisions for their objectives. Through budget
planning and control, the manager is forced to look ahead and
predict what will happen in the future to propose decisions and
detail plans for each department to deal with problems if they
happen (BPP,180). In addition, the budget planning and control
system also helps communicate ideas and plans. It means that the
budget planning and control system will help people aware what
are obligations they must to do. In addition, communication
might be one-way, with managers giving orders to subordinates,
or there might be a two-way dialogue and exchange of ideas (BPP,
180). Moreover, they also help co-ordinate activities to combine
different department together. Therefore, all of people can direct
their efforts to the common goals (BPP, 181). Furthermore,
providing a framework for responsibility also is one of objective of
the budget planning and control system. This will help managers
more aware of their responsibilities to achieve budget targets for
operations under their personal control (BPP,181). Besides that, a
system of monitoring and control are also established. A budget is
seen as a yardstick of actual performance for measured and
3
Production budget:
Beginning inventory:
Production budget:
II. Task B:
While breaking even might not seem like much of a business goal, its
an important reference for your financial people. Your break-even
points provide important benchmarks for long-term planning.
Knowing your break-even for areas such as sales, production,
operations and investment payback can help you with pricing, debt
service and other functions of operating your business.
Break Even
A break-even point occurs when your revenues cover your expenses.
For example, if it costs you $4 in materials, labor and other direct costs
to make a widget, your break-even point for manufacturing 1,000
widgets is $4,000, or $4 per widget. This does not cover your overhead
costs, which are indirect expenses such as rent, insurance, marketing
and phones. Your overhead costs to run your business might be
$100,000, or $10 per widget if you make 1,000 widgets. Your break-even
point to make and sell 1,000 widgets is $14,000, or $14 per widget. If
you cover your costs for overhead and manufacturing, you break even
on your operations, but you might still have start-up expenses you
havent paid, and you havent broken even in terms of recovering your
initial investment. If you have $20,000 in start-up debt and want to
pay that off in two years, you must add $10 per widget if you will sell
2,000 widgets over two years. Your break-even selling point for the
first two years is $24 per widget. After that, your break-even point
drops to $14 per widget. Knowing this, you might change your
investment payback to a three-year period, if you cant be competitive
at $24 per widget.
Price-Setting Implications
Once you know your various break-even points, you can set your long-
term pricing strategies. For example, once you have paid off your
initial investment, you can keep your prices the same, making more
profits per widget, or you can lower your prices, since you no longer
have to pay off your investment debt. Lowering prices might result in
more sales, bringing you more total, or gross, profits, even though
your profit per widget is lower.
Marketing Considerations
Each time you consider a sale or discount, calculate your break-even
points to determine if you can still make money at that price. If you
spend money on a marketing promotion, you can determine whether
its worthwhile by adding the cost of the promotion to your current
overhead expense for the time period the promotion is running to
determine your new break-even point. Or, you can divide the cost of
the promotion by the additional number of units the promotion
generated in sales and apply that cost to your overhead cost per unit
for those additional units.
7
Financial Strategies
There is more than one way to reach break-even. You might increase
your sales, raise your prices to increase your profit margins, lower your
profits to generate more gross profits or reduce expenses. You can
reduce expenses through cost-cutting measures, depreciating assets,
reducing interest-bearing debt or investing excess cash to generate
capital gains on that money. Knowing your break-even points will let
you see the effects these different strategies have.
Investment Implications
Potential investors not only want to know the potential return on
their investments, they also want to know when they will see that
return. Some companies take years before they are profitable. In some
scenarios, the business might lose money during the first year or
several years before breaking even from operations. When the
company is profitable based on its operations, it wont need any more
investment money or cash reserves to continue operating. However,
even after it is profitable from operations, the company might still
carry significant investment money it needs to pay back using its
profits after operations. Therefore, the company has not made a profit
for its investors. Investors will want your break-even points in your
business plan to determine if they are interested in your opportunity.
8
III. Task D:
a. The answer should be focused on using the current and quick
ratios. While the current ratio has steadily increased, it is to be noted
that the liquidity has not resulted from the most liquid assets as the
CEO proposes. Instead, from the quick ratio one could note that the
increase in liquidity is caused by an increase in inventories. For a
fresh food firm one could argue that inventories are relatively liquid
when compared to other industries. Also, given the information, the
industry-benchmark can be used to derive that the firm's quick ratio
is very similar to the industry level and that the current ratio is indeed
slightly higher - again, this seems to come from inventories.