Sarah Russell grew up in a small town in the flatlands of western Kansas where she was born. 1 In high school, she was homecoming queen, valedictorian of her graduating class, point guard on her basketball team for two years, and a candy striper (volunteer) at the local hospital. Since her parents had attended the University of Kansas, Sarah was off to Lawrence at age 18. After spending her freshman year posting straight A’s in 30 hours of college courses, Sarah settled on accounting as her major after seriously considering journalism, pre-law, and finance. Although Sarah had yet to take any courses in accounting, she had been impressed by a presentation that a female partner of a large accounting firm had made at a career fair. Sarah was excited by the challenges and opportunities presented by public accounting, as described by the partner. Here was a field in which she could learn a great deal in a short period of time and advance rapidly to a position where she had important responsibilities. Plus, public accounting provided a wide range of career paths. If she really enjoyed public accounting, she could pursue a partnership position with a large accounting firm. Then again, she might “hang out her shingle” in her hometown, see the world on the internal audit staff of a large corporation, or return to college after a couple of years of real-world experience to earn an MBA. Sarah completed the tough accounting courses at the University of Kansas with only two small blemishes on her transcript—B’s in individual and corporate taxation. During the fall semester of her senior year, Sarah accepted a position as a staff accountant with a Big Four accounting firm. Sarah considered staying in her home state but decided instead to request an assignment in her new employer’s Chicago office. She believed that exposure to big-city life would allow her to arrive at a more informed decision when it was time to make a long-term commitment to a career path and a lifestyle. During her first year on the job, Sarah served on six audit engagements. Her clients included a pipeline company, a religious foundation, and a professional sports team. She worked hard on those assignments and earned impressive performance appraisals from each of her immediate supervisors. Somehow Sarah also squeezed a CPA review course into her hectic schedule that first year. And she was glad she did. She was among the few rookies in her large office to pass each section of the CPA exam on her first attempt. With that barrier out of the way, Sarah focused her energy on being promoted to audit senior as quickly as possible. Several individuals provided Sarah with much-needed moral support during her first year, including R. J. Bell, an audit partner. Bell was 40 years old and had been a partner for eight years. According to the office grapevine, he was in line to become the new office managing partner within………….. 1. In your opinion, how should Sarah have handled this matter? Identify the factors that Sarah should have considered in dealing with the situation. Also, identify the professional and personal responsibilities of Sarah, R. J. Bell, and other relevant individuals in this matter. 2. What were the costs and potential costs to Sarah’s employer in this case? How should accounting firms attempt to prevent these types of situations from occurring? Assume that rather than speaking to Bell, Sarah had told the office managing partner about the problem she faced. How should the office managing partner have dealt with the matter? 3. This case took place several years ago. Do you believe that events similar to those that took place in this case could occur now? Explain.
> DeColores Paint Company owns 10 trucks that it uses to deliver paint and decorating supplies to builders. On average, each truck returns to the company’s single loading dock at a rate of three times per 8-hour day (or at a rate of 3/8 = 0.375 times per h
> A manufacturer of engine belts uses multipurpose manufacturing equipment to produce a variety of products. A technician is employed to perform the setup operations needed to change the machines over from one product to the next. The amount of time requir
> To determine the feasible region associated with less than or equal to constraints or greater than or equal to constraints, we graphed these constraints as if they were equal to constraints. Why is this possible?
> Several hundred PCs are in use at the corporate headquarters for National Insurance Corporation. The pattern of breakdowns for these PCs follows a Poisson distribution with an average rate of 4.5 breakdowns per 5-day work week. The company has a repair t
> Refer to the previous question. Suppose that Road Rambler’s phone system can only keep four calls on hold at any time, the average profit margin of each call is $55, and sales reps cost the company $12 per hour. In Previous Question Road Rambler sells s
> During tax season, the IRS hires seasonal workers to help answer the questions of taxpayers who call a special 800 telephone number for tax information. Suppose that calls to this line occur at a rate of 60 per hour and follow a Poisson distribution. The
> State University allows students and faculty to access its super computer by high-speed proxy servers. The university has 15 proxy server connections that can be used. When all of the proxy server connections are in use, the system can keep up to 10 user
> The Orange Blossom Marathon takes place in Orlando, Florida, each December. The organizers of this race are trying to solve a problem that occurs at the finish line each year. Thousands of runners take part in this race. The fastest runners finish the 26
> The Westland Title Insurance Company leases one copying machine for $45 per day that is used by all individuals at their office. An average of five persons per hour arrive to use this machine, with each person using it for an average of 8 minutes. Assume
> The manager of the Radford Credit Union (RCU) wants to determine how many part-time tellers to employ to cover the peak demand time in its lobby from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. RCU currently has three full-time tellers that handle the demand during the rest
> The Madrid Mist outlet store at Chiswell Mills sells discount luggage and does most of its daily business in the evening between the hours of 6 and 9 pm. During this time, customers arrive at the checkout desk at a rate of one every 2 minutes following a
> Seabreeze Furniture in Orlando maintains a large, central warehouse where it stores items until they are sold or needed by the company’s many stores in the Central Florida area. A four-person crew works at the warehouse to load or unload trucks that arri
> On Friday nights, patients arrive at the emergency room at Mercy Hospital following a Poisson distribution at an average rate of seven per hour. Assume that an emergency-room physician can treat an average of three patients per hour, and that the treatme
> In the solution to the Blue Ridge Hot Tubs problem, the optimal values for X1 and X2 turned out to be integers (whole numbers). Is this a general property of the solutions to LP problems? In other words, will the solution to an LP problem always consist
> Cuts-R-Us provides low cost haircuts at a shopping center in Boise, Idaho. During the day, customers arrive at an average rate of 9 per hour following an exponential distribution. After a customer is in a cosmetician’s chair, it takes an average of 18 mi
> Tri-Cities Bank has a single drive-in teller window. On Friday mornings, customers arrive at the drive-in window randomly, following a Poisson distribution at an average rate of 30 per hour. a. How many customers arrive per minute, on average? b. How man
> Describe a situation in which a business might want customers to wait some amount of time before receiving service.
> This chapter implies that customers find waiting in line to be an unpleasant experience. In addition to reducing the length of the wait itself, what other steps could a business take to reduce the frustration customers experience while waiting? Give spec
> Consider the three queuing configurations shown in Figure 13.2. For each configuration, describe a situation (besides the examples mentioned in the chapter) in which you have encountered or observed the same type of queuing system. Figure 13.2 Custo
> Calls arrive at a rate of 150 per hour to the 800 number for the Land’s Beginning mail-order catalog company. The company currently employs 20 operators who are paid $10 per hour in wages and benefits and can each handle an average of 6 calls per hour. A
> The drive-thru window at Hokie Burger requires 2.5 minutes on average to process an order with a standard deviation of 3 minutes. Cars arrive at the window at a rate of 20 per hour. a. On average, how many cars are waiting to be served? b. On average, ho
> Interstate 81 through southwest Virginia is heavily traveled by long-distance truckers. To cut down on accidents, The Virginia State Patrol carries out random inspections of a trucks weight and the condition of its brakes. On Fridays, trucks approach the
> Road Rambler sells specialty running shoes and apparel through catalogs and the Web. Customers can phone in orders at any time day or night, 7 days a week. During the 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. shift, a single sales rep handles all calls. During this time, calls a
> Customers checking out at Food Tiger arrive in a single-line queue served by two cashiers at a rate of eight per hour according to a Poisson distribution. Each cashier processes customers at a rate of eight per hour according to an exponential distributi
> Patrick’s luck had changed overnight – but not his skill at mathematical reasoning. The day after graduating from college he used the $20 that his grandmother had given him as a graduation gift to buy a lottery ticket. He knew his chances of winning the
> During the summer of 2006, a syndicate of investors led by The Blackstone Group, one of Wall Street’s largest private equity investment firms, initiated a secret plan to acquire Freescale Semiconductor. Based in Austin, Texas, Freescale was among the wor
> Suzette Washington financed her college education by working as an inventory clerk for Bertolini’s, a clothing store chain located in the southeastern United States. 1 Bertolini’s caters primarily to fashion-conscious young men and women. The company’s
> Alex Fries emigrated to the United States from Germany in the early nineteenth century. 1 The excitement and opportunity promised by the western frontier fascinated thousands of new Americans, including the young German, who followed his dreams and the
> Imagine this scenario. A few years after graduating from the University of Miami, New Mexico State University, or Ohio Wesleyan University with an accounting degree, you find yourself working as an audit senior with an international accounting firm. Your
> Sam Walton was born on March 29, 1918, in Kingfisher, Oklahoma, a small town 50 miles northwest of Oklahoma City. Sam’s father, a farmer, struggled to support his family during the Great Depression. The Walton family hopscotched around the country before
> A Japanese bank introduced the concept of around-the-clock access to cash in the 1960s when it installed the world’s first cash-dispensing machine. In 1968, the first networked ATM appeared in Dallas, Texas. 1 Two generations later, there are more than
> During the early 1880s, David McConnell, the son of Irish immigrants, eked out a livelihood in New York City by selling books door to door. The persistent McConnell tried one gimmick after another to boost his sales. One evening, he prepared a home-made
> Lore Levi was worried as she scanned the most recent monthly bank statement for the Howard Street Jewelers. 1 For decades, she and her husband, Julius, had owned and operated the small business that they had opened after fleeing Nazi Germany during Worl
> In 1890, the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers professional baseball team joined the National League. Over the following years, the Dodgers would have considerable difficulty competing with the other baseball teams in the New York City area. Those teams, principa
> On the morning of October 14, 2011, Michael Woodford met with the 15-member board of directors of Tokyo-based Olympus Corporation. 1 Woodford, a native of Great Britain who had been appointed Olympus’s chief executive officer (CEO) two weeks earlier, exp
> The surging demand for petroleum products in recent decades has produced a windfall of revenues for many oil-rich Islamic countries in the Middle East, including, among others, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Because Islam limits the
> In 1956, the Republic of the Sudan obtained its independence from Great Britain. Although unified, Sudan was effectively two countries within one. Northern Sudan, home of the nation’s capital, Khartoum, was controlled by Islamic fundamentalists, while so
> In January 2007, Matthew Neumann and Nicholas Tides, two Boeing employees, transferred to the company’s internal audit department. Neumann, who worked in Boeing’s Seattle headquarters, and Tides, who was based in St. Louis, believed that the move would a
> The Horn of Africa has long played an important role in world history. Most historians believe that the large triangular peninsula that juts into the Indian Ocean along the east coast of Africa was the home of the legendary Kingdom of Punt, an important
> The black Toyota minivan made slow but steady progress down the narrow, unpaved road as it approached the village of Takhli in south central Thailand, approximately 150 miles north of Bangkok. On either side of the bumpy road were fields of sugarcane, de
> In 1996, two friends and business partners, Jia Xiao Gong and Weizhou Lian, founded Longtop Financial Technologies Limited in Beijing. Gong served as Longtop’s chair-man of the board, while Lian assumed the title of chief executive officer (CEO). The two
> “Excuse me, are you Jake Tadlock?” 1 “No, my name is Eli. Eli Arezzo.” “Hello, Eli. My name is Olivia. Olivia Thomas. I’m sorry. I was told that this was Jake’s cubicle.” “No need to be sorry. Jake’s cubicle is around the corner,” Eli replied as he poin
> Frank Coleman pounded away at his calculator as he tried in vain to reconcile his number for the LIFO reserve to the figure recorded by the client. 1 Frustrated and fatigued, Frank glanced at his wristwatch; he couldn’t believe it was 9:40 p.m. Frank im
> In the mid-1990s, KPMG Peat Marwick audited a small, Dallas-based drugstore chain, Texas Drug Warehouse (TDW). Before beginning the company’s 1995 audit, KPMG “made a business decision to reduce the number of hours it would expend on the TDW audit and to
> Ladislas Nay immigrated to the United States from Hungary in 1921 at the age of 18. The opportunities offered by his new land excited the industrious young immigrant and he promised himself that he would make the most of them. Shortly after arriving in t
> In the business world of the Roaring Twenties, the schemes and scams of flimflam artists and confidence men were legendary. The absence of a strong regulatory system at the federal level to police the securities markets—the Securities and Exchange Commis
> Historians disagree when the first email message caromed down the information superhighway, but there is no dispute that email was the Internet’s first “killer app.” Email quickly became the primary communication medium within the business world. By 2015
> In 2012, Reuters, an international news agency based in London, startled the U.S. accounting profession. A Reuters article reported that Washington Council Ernst & Young (WCEY), a registered lobbying firm and division of Ernst & Young (EY), was providing
> Attracting customers and closing sales are challenges that face all retailers, ranging from a Piggly Wiggly grocery in a small southern town to the Giorgio Armani Boutique nestled among the elegant shops lining Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. Besides the n
> In the late 1990s, James Fazio reached what many CPAs consider the pinnacle of success in the accounting profession, namely, partnership in one of the Big Four public accounting firms. For more than a decade, Fazio served as an audit partner with Deloitt
> “So, any good news on the staffing front, Till?” Sophie White Eagle asked in between bites of a Christmas cookie. 1 “Nope. Still short at least one staff accountant,” Tillman Rollins replied glumly before adding, “probably two.”Tillman Rollins and his
> Madison Wells should have been happy. 1 Another hectic busy season was coming to an end which meant the audit manager’s standard workload would drop from 55 to 65 hours per week to a much more reasonable 45 hours. But Madison wasn’t thinking of the end
> “No, that’s okay, Bea. I’ll write that memo this weekend and send it to Mr. Fielder. You go on home.” 1 “Are you sure, Chuck? I don’t mind staying a while longer.” “Thanks, Bea, but you’ve already put in too much overtime this week.” After he sent his s
> “Oh no, not Store 51,” Avis Love moaned under her breath. For the third time, Avis compared the dates listed in the cash receipts journal with the corresponding dates on the bank deposit slips. Avis shook her head softly and leaned back in her chair. The
> One month after being promoted to audit senior, Tommy O’Connell was assigned to the audit engagement team for the Altamesa Manufacturing Company. 1 Tommy worked out of his Big Four employer’s Fort Worth practice office, while Altamesa was headquarted in
> After spending much of the previous three months working elbow-to-elbow with as many as six colleagues in a cramped and poorly ventilated conference room, Hamilton Wong was looking forward to moving on to his next assignment. 1 Wong served as an in-charg
> “Bill, will you have that inventory memo done by this afternoon?” 1 “Yeah, Sam, it’s coming along. I should have it done by five, or so.” “Make it three . . . or so. Okay, Bub?” Bill responded with a smile and a nod. He had a good relationship with Sam H
> Leigh Ann Walker graduated from a major state university with a bachelor’s degree in accounting. 1 During her college career, Walker earned a 3.9 grade point average and participated in several extracurricular activities, including three student business
> In 1983, Marta Giordano inherited the restaurant that her grandfather, Alberto Buranello, had established shortly after returning to his hometown of Boston after serving in World War I. 1 For nearly a century, the restaurant, Buranello’s Ristorante, has
> Richard Grimes glanced at his wristwatch as he pulled into the nearly deserted parking lot of the corporate headquarters of McCaleb Medical Corporation (MMC). 1 It was 6:25 a.m. on a cold and overcast Friday morning in February. Based in a suburb on the
> In late 2003, Le-Nature’s Inc., a Pennsylvania-based beverage company, selected BDO Seidman to replace Ernst & Young (EY) as its independent audit firm. A few months earlier, EY had insisted that Le-Nature’s retain an external law firm to investigate all
> No doubt, Guy Enright was apprehensive as he talked to the mysterious stranger on the phone. At the time, Enright, a British citizen and Chartered Accountant, was working on an unusual engagement for his employer, KPMG. 1,2 The Big Four accounting firm h
> In the early 1930s, the Great Depression forced engineering student William Harrah to drop out of UCLA. Known as a “hustler” by his friends, Harrah began operating a bingo parlor to support himself. After repeated confrontations with law enforcement auth
> Cornelius Vander Starr wanted to see the world. In 1918, the 26-year-old Californian emptied his bank account to purchase a one-way ticket to the Far East on a steam-ship. After “bumming around” Japan for several months, Vander Starr traveled to Shanghai
> Russell Smith knew why he had been summoned to the office of A. Walter Rognlien, the 74-year-old chairman of the board and chief executive officer (CEO) of Smith’s employer, Cardillo Travel Systems, Inc. 1 Just two days earlier, Cardillo’s in-house attor
> Like most high school graduates, Michael Dell had a sense of anticipation, if not exhilaration, when he left home to begin his college career. Because Dell planned to become a doctor, like his father, he declared premed as his major when he enrolled in t
> “The final undergraduate award today is the William J. Upchurch Medal, which is given annually to the outstanding senior in the Hopkins College of Business. 1 Nominations are made by Hopkins faculty members and the criteria considered in choosing the w
> Arvel Ray Smart was born in Lebanon, Missouri, and grew up in the small town of Bolivar, 40 miles west of Lebanon in southeastern Missouri. 1 Arvel’s mother and father graduated from the University of Missouri with accounting degrees in the mid-1970s. T
> Wiley Jackson spent three months as an audit intern with a local practice office of a major accounting firm while he was earning an undergraduate accounting degree at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Wiley thoroughly enjoyed the three-month interns
> “Woody, that’s $2,400 you owe me. Okay? We’re straight on that?” “Yeah, yeah. I got you.” “And you’ll pay me back by next Friday?” “Al, I said I’d pay you back by Friday, didn’t I?” “Just checkin’.” Borrowing money from a friend can strain even the stron
> Refer to the data in Exercise 10–25, regarding Canandaigua Container Company. Prepare journal entries to: 1. Record the purchase of direct material on account. 2. Record the direct-material variances and add direct-material cost to Work-in-Process Invent
> Visit the website for one of the following companies, or a different company of your choosing. Marriott Hotels www.marriott.com ………………
> Choose one of the following manufacturers (or any manufacturer of your choosing), and use the Internet to gather information about any new products the company has recently introduced or plans to introduce. Boeing www.boeing.com ……….……… Kodak www.kodak.c
> Canandaigua Container Company manufactures recyclable soft-drink cans. A unit of production is a case of 12 dozen cans. The following standards have been set by the production-engineering staff and the controller. Direct labor: ……………………… Direct material:
> The following terms are used to describe various economic characteristics of costs. a. Opportunity cost b. Out-of-pocket cost c. Sunk cost d. Differential cost e. Marginal cost f. Average cost Required: Choose one of the terms listed above to character
> Maria Chavez makes custom mooring covers for boats in Tumpa, Florida. Each mooring cover is hand sewn to fit a particular boat. If covers are made for two or more identical boats, each successive cover generally requires less time to make. Chavez has bee
> Global Communications, Inc. manufactures communications satellites used in TV signal transmission. The firm currently purchases one component for its satellites from a European firm. A Global Communications engineering team has found a way to use the com
> For each of the following costs, indicate whether the amount is a direct or indirect cost of the equipment maintenance department. Also indicate whether each cost is at least partially controllable by the department supervisor. 1. Cost of electricity use
> Due to evaporation during production, Plasto Company requires 4 pounds of material input for every 3 pounds of good plastic sheets manufactured. During May, the company produced 6,000 pounds of good sheets. Required: Compute the total standard allowed i
> Write the formula for ROI, showing sales margin and capital turnover as its components.
> Show, using T-accounts, how production overhead is added to Work-in-Process Inventory when standard costing is used.
> McCartney Company manufactures guitars. The company uses a standard, job-order cost accounting system in two production departments. In the Construction Department the wooden guitars are built by highly skilled craftspeople and coated with several layers
> Execucraft, Inc., manufactures upholstered office chairs. The standard cost for material and labor is $89.20 per chair. This includes 8 kilograms of direct material at a standard cost of $5.00 per kilogram, and 6 hours of direct labor at $8.20 per hour.
> Ozarks Camping Equipment, Inc., has established the following direct-material standards for its two products. During May, the company purchased 4,200 yards of tent fabric for its standard model at a cost of $26,880. The actual May production of the stan
> California Housewares’ Merced Division is a small manufacturer of wooden household items. Al Rivkin, divisional controller, plans to implement a standard-costing system. Rivkin has collected information from several co-workers that will assist him in dev
> McKeag Corporation manufactures agricultural machinery. At a recent staff meeting, the following direct-labor variance report for the year just ended was presented by the controller. McKeag’s controller uses the following rule of thumb
> Concord Farms produces items made from local farm products that are distributed to supermarkets. For many years, Concord’s products have had strong regional sales on the basis of brand recognition; however, other companies have begun marketing similar p
> Instructional Resources International (IRI) is a rapidly expanding company involved in the m ass reproduction of instructional materials. Ralph Boston, owner and manager of IRI, has made a concentrated effort to provide a quality product at a fair price,
> The director of cost management for Peoria Instrument Corporation compares each month’s actual results with a monthly plan. The standard direct-labor rates for the year just ended and the standard hours allowed, given the actual output
> SolarPrime, Inc. uses a standard-costing system to assist in the evaluation of operations. The company has had considerable trouble in recent months with suppliers and employees, so much so that management hired a new production supervisor, Marc Hoctor.
> Valport Valve Company manufactured 15,600 units during March of a control valve used by milk processors in its Shreveport plant. Records indicated the following: Direct labor .................................................... 80,200 hr. at $10.95 Direc
> List three observable and three hidden quality costs that could occur in the airline industry related to the quality of service provided.
> The following data pertain to Colgate Palmolive’s liquid filling line during the first 10 mon t hs of a particular year. The standard ratio of direct-labor hours to machine hours is 4:1. The standard direct-labor rate is $15.08. Requir
> Harrison Wolfe operates a residential landscaping business in an affluent suburb of Atlanta. In an effort to provide quality service, he has concentrated solely on the design and installation of upscale landscaping plans (e.g., trees, shrubs, fountains,
> South Atlantic Chemical Company manufactures industrial chemicals in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The company plans to introduce a new chemical solution and needs to develop a standard product cost. The new chemical solution is made by combining a chemical co
> Gandolph Game Company has established the following standards for the prime costs of o n e unit of its chief product, dartboards During September, Gandolph purchased 320,000 kilograms of direct material at a total cost of $608,000. The total wages for S
> During March, Manhattan Fabrics Corporation manufactured 1,000 units of a special multilayer fabric with the trade name Stylex. The following information from the Stylex production department also pertains to March. Direct material purchased: 36,000 yard
> The director of cost management for Odessa Company uses a statistical control chart to help management determine when to investigate variances. The critical value is 1 standard deviation. The company incurred the following direct-labor efficiency varianc
> Part of your company’s a c counting database was destroyed when Godzilla attacked the city. You have been able to gather the following data from your files. Reconstruct the remaining information using the available data. All of the raw
> Refer to the data in the preceding exercise. Use diagrams similar to those in Exhibits 10–2, 10–3, and 10–4 to determine the direct-material and direct-labor variances. Indicate whether each variance
