Accounting Papers: Accounting Essay Help, Accounting Research Papers and Term Paper Writing

Executive Summary
By looking at the calculation result from Appendix, we are aware that the efficiency variances for material, labour and variable overhead, the labour price variance and spending variance for variable and fixed overhead turn out to be unfavourable and favourable. These results can be used to evaluate the Jigsaw department, and give the performance evaluation of Jason Cheng (department’s manager), Thomas Licuria (purchasing manager), Christine Tarrant (production manager). It is followed by detailed explanation of approaches specified in the development of the standard costing system; variance analysis, performance evaluation and reward system respectively, and the proper recommendations to improve those three areas.

Introduction
Strattenberg Toys that a privately owned company in the manufacture of toys, puzzles, games and jigsaws has been operating for over 20 years. Each department is responsible for production, distribution and customer service related to its products. Research and Development, Product and Process Design and Marketing are undertaken centrally. The company had a great reputation in their industry. The Jigsaws Department began operations in March 2002 and has finished its first full financial year of operations. Read more…

Many corporations judge the health of their finances based solely on the bottom-line. However, as one article shows, there is more to a company’s financial health than the final net profit. According to Joseph T. Wells, in his article “control cash-register thievery: show your clients the importance of looking above the bottom-line,” fraud does not always show up on balance sheets.

In this article, Wells discusses the problems a particular client had when it was found that there were suspicious return receipts on certain products. This was definite trouble for the company, which was named Discount Department Stores (most likely and assumed name in order to protect the real company that underwent this problem).

The first tip came when the company’s internal auditor spotted sales for funds of exacting amounts — 3 and are dollars — $400 and so on. Knowing that refunds do not typically come in exact hybrid-dollar increments, the auditor worked with Wells, who headed up a fraud squad at the time. As Wells question the auditor, he learned that Discount’s methods of financial accounting involved checking net sales and confirming that amount in the bank, rather than performing a horizontal analysis of income statements to determine if refunds were increasing as compared to sales. Read more…