Question

Finished Goods inventory accounts as of the date of the tornado touchdown. Managerial Analysis cial CT14.2 Tenrack is a fairly large manufacturing company located in the southern United States. The company manufactures tennis rackets, tennis balls, tennis clothing, and tennis shoes, all bearing the company's distinctive logo, a large green question mark on a white flocked tennis ball. The company's sales have been increasing over the past 10 years. The tennis racket division has recently implemented several advanced manufacturing techniques. Robot arms hold the tennis rackets in place while glue dries, and machine vision systems check for defects. The engineering and design team uses computerized drafting and testing of new products. The following managers work in the tennis racket division: Jason Dennis, Sales Manager (supervises all sales representatives) Peggy Groneman, Technical Specialist (supervises computer programmers) Dave Marley, Cost Accounting Manager (supervises cost accountants) Kevin Carson, Production Supervisor (supervises all manufacturing employees) Sally Renner, Engineer (supervises all new-product design teams) Instructions a. What are the primary information needs of each manager?

Answer 1

Jason Dennis is the Sales Manager, is responsible for supervising all the sales representatives. The primary accounting information that a Sales Manager should know is the customer base for the organization (Jiambalvo, 2010). Since the company is involved in the trading of tennis related products, Jason Dennis would instruct his sales representatives to concentrate their efforts on the people who play tennis for either recreational or for professional reasons. Besides, Jason Denis would require the information of each of the products that they offer at the company. This information includes the cost of each product. The Sales Manager do not just require the cost of a product at the final stage but the cost from the manufacturing stage to the point where it is ready to be sold. Being the Sales Manager, Jason Dennis is also supposed to be familiar with the salary paid to each of his sales representatives (Gregoriou & Finch, 2012). Furthermore, he should know the rate of commission that they are given on successful sales. This information is important because it would enable the company to determine the number of profits made on successful sales.

Dave Marley is Cost Accounting Manager and is responsible for supervising the cost accounts. He would be required to know the cost associated with the each product that the company manufactures. These costs fall into two categories (Gregoriou & Finch, 2012). The first type is the period cost category while second is the product price category. Period costs comprise mainly of the expenses incurred in the selling of the goods and the administrative costs while the product costs include the manufacturing overhead cost, the cost of labor and the raw material costs. Manufacturing overhead costs are costs which are related to indirect expenses such as indirect labor and indirect cost of raw materials.

Kevin Carson is the Production Supervisor. The Production Supervisor would need information similar to that required by the cost accounting manager (Weygandt, Kieso & Kimmel, 2012). There are only a few differences like information that the two should have. Such a difference in the information required by the two would occur. For instance, the cost accounting manager is required to know both the information on the period cost and the production cost whereas the production need only know the cost of production.

Sally Renner, the Engineer, is responsible for the supervision of all new product teams. The Engineer would require information on the target audience of all the new products (Weygandt, Kieso & Kimmel, 2012). The Engineer is required to work in cooperation with the Sales Manager so that she can understand whether the products manufactured by the company would be loved by the target market which consists of the tennis players and the tennis game audience. The Engineer should also be informed of the cost of the product in each newly created design(Weygandt, Kieso & Kimmel, 2012). This is mainly due to the fact the product cost would be necessary in the determination of the cost of selling the product. Besides, working with the Sales Manager would enable the Engineer to get information on the amount that the target market can pay to get the goods made by the company. The information would be crucial since it would allow the Engineer to design a product whose price is within the range that the customers are willing to pay.