Create a 9-slide presentation in which you analyze cost accounting practices to make a recommendation about whether or not to accept a purchase offer at a lower price than normal. You may either record the presentation or write a 2-3 page supporting report.

Scenario

The Acme Pickle Company has distributed pickles under the “Florida’s Best” brand for eight years from its production facility in Jacksonville, Florida. It sells the pickles to stores in the southeastern United States. Acme normally produces between 8,000 and 10,000 cases of pickles a month but has the capacity to produce 12,000 cases without adding equipment or personnel.

The owner of a twenty-store supermarket chain in Wisconsin, called Super Deals, visits friends in Florida and is impressed with the quality of “Florida’s Best” pickles. He approaches you, an Acme Pickle account manager, with an offer to buy 2,000 cases of pickles to use in a special promotion at his stores. He is thinking of something such as:

“Free jar of Florida’s Best pickles with every purchase of forty dollars or more—this month only!”

He offers Acme a price of $9.50 per case, knowing that it is a very substantial discount from the normal selling price of $20 a case. Acme’s management is inclined to turn the offer down, because their cost is calculated at $10.00 a case. They believe they would lose money if they sold at $9.50 a case. You, on the other hand, believe that some errors have been made in the cost accounting.

Your Role

You are the account manager for Acme Pickles.

Requirements

Your analysis for the Controller and Sales Manager is needed to suggest a different way of calculating the pricing of the pickles that may be lower. As part of your analysis, address the following items:

• Explain why some production costs are variable and some are fixed.
• Analyze the benefit of recalculating the cost of pickle production.
  • How would you recalculate it?
  • What would the result be?
  • What is the benefit to the company of recalculating the cost?
• Analyze how financial accounting of production cost differs from managerial accounting of production cost.
  • Explain the difference between the two accounting methods.
  • Identify the benefits and drawbacks of each method.
• Recommend a plan of action to management regarding Super Deals’ offer.

Below is the cost report for a recent month. In this month, Acme produced 9,000 cases and sold them at $20 per case, which is Acme’s normal selling price. Nine thousand cases are well beyond Acme’s break-even point, enabling Acme to record a substantial profit at the nine-thousand-case level.

Acme Pickle Company Cost Report

Item	Cost
Cucumbers	$15,000
Spices and vinegar	11,000
Jars and lids	10,000
Direct labor, paid by the case	30,000
Line supervisors, on salary	10,000
Depreciation on factory	10,000
Property taxes on factory	3,000
Insurance on factory	1,000
Total Costs:	$90,000
Cost per case (9,000 cases produced) $10.00

Deliverable Format

Your team lead wants to share this analysis across remote locations of the organization and is hoping you will set the standard for how analyses and decisions of this type should be presented and supported. Your team has requested either a recorded presentation (including slides and notes) or a presentation and supporting reporting that can be distributed as a model. Prepare a presentation of at least 9 slides using PowerPoint or software of your choice detailing your recommendation and the information you used to make your recommendation. You can either record the presentation or prepare a separate report supporting the presentation.

If you choose to record your presentation, you may use Capella-supported Kaltura Media or another technology of your choice that produces a shareable URL. Kaltura is recording software that can be used to create webcam, screen, and audio recordings. Refer to the MBA Program Resources for the Using Kaltura tutorial to prepare for this option. If you choose to use something other than Kaltura Media, ensure that it creates a shareable URL and can be embedded in the courseroom to ensure faculty can access your recording.

Note: If you require the use of assistive technology or alternative communication methods to participate in these activities, please contact DisabilityServices@Capella.edu to request accommodations.

Recommendation requirements:

• Presentation slides:
  • Create at least 9 slides detailing your recommendation and the information you used to make your recommendation.
  • Include additional details as slide notes.
• Supporting information. Choose one of the following options:
  • Record your presentation.
  • Create a 2–3 page report to support your slides.

Related company standards:

• The recommendation report is a professional document and should therefore follow the corresponding MBA Academic and Professional Document Guidelines, including single-spaced paragraphs.
• In addition to the presentation or report materials, include:
  • Title (slide or page).
  • References (slide or page).
  • Appendix with supporting materials.
  • At least two APA-formatted references.

Evaluation

By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies through corresponding scoring guide criteria:

• Competency 1: Explain how accounting concepts and practices impact financial reporting.
  • Explain why some production costs are variable and some are fixed.
• Competency 2: Apply principles of accounting to assess financial performance.
  • Analyze how financial accounting of production cost differs from managerial accounting of production cost.
• Competency 3: Analyze accounting information to support business decisions.
  • Analyze the benefit of recalculating the cost of pickle production.
  • Recommend a plan of action to management.
• Competency 4: Communicate financial information with multiple stakeholders.
  • Communicate accounting information clearly.

Faculty will use the scoring guide to review your deliverable as if they were the Controller or Sales Manager. Along with reviewing the content, they will also review the way you present this content. Review the scoring guide prior to developing and submitting your assessment.

• Completely dismantle the current system and start over—A monumental task
• Revise the current payment system to reflect current economic constraints
• Cut Medicare and Medicaid
• Insurance reform
• National health insurance based on the Massachusetts Model
• Malpractice reform
• Legislation such as the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, the Affordable Care Act (2010), and others

• Describe the model you are supporting to best control costs without compromising the quality and access to health care, and explain how the model works.
• Analyze the method that you are supporting, detailing the strengths and weaknesses from all stakeholder group (e.g., patient, provider, and third-party payer) perspectives.
• Provide an example of the model in real time or as a scenario.
• Summarize the anticipated results in terms of costs and benefits.

1. Emotion plays a role in driving how we think and behave. In your readings and resources in this unit, you learned about theories of emotion and the misattribution of arousal.

Describe how emotion is relevant to our sense of belonging. In your discussion, include various emotions such as happiness, anger, and guilt. How does culture play a role in the regulation and expression of our emotions?

2. Describe your understanding of emotional intelligence, and support your thinking with information from your resource(s).

How does emotional intelligence or its components relate to some of the other concepts you have learned from your unit readings over the past four weeks, such as self-regulation, self-esteem, et cetera? What strategies can people use to intentionally develop their emotional intelligence?

Throughout the course, students will engage in weekly reflection and scholarly activities. These assignments are presented in Topic 1 to allow students to plan ahead, and incorporate the deliverables into the Individual Success Plan if they so choose.

The weekly reflective journals and scholarly activities will not be submitted in LoudCloud each week; a final, culminating submission will be due in Topic 10. No submission is required until Topic 10.

Professional Capstone and Practicum Reflective Journal

Students are required to maintain weekly reflective narratives throughout the course to combine into a final, course-long reflective journal that integrates leadership and inquiry into current practice as it applies to the Professional Capstone and Practicum course. This course-long journal assignment will be due in Topic 10.

In each week’s entry, you should reflect on the personal knowledge and skills gained throughout the Professional Capstone and Practicum course. Your entry should address a variable combination of the following, dependent on the specific practice immersion clinical experiences you encountered that week:

1. New practice approaches
2. Intraprofessional collaboration
3. Health care delivery and clinical systems
4. Ethical considerations in health care
5. Population health concerns
6. The role of technology in improving health care outcomes
7. Health policy
8. Leadership and economic models
9. Health disparities

In the Topic 10 submission, each of the areas should be addressed in one or more of the weekly entries.

This reflection journal also allows students to outline what they have discovered about their professional practice, personal strengths and weaknesses that surfaced, additional resources and abilities that could be introduced to a given situation to influence optimal outcomes, and finally, how they met competencies and course objectives.

Scholarly Activities

Throughout the RN-to-BSN program, students are required to participate in scholarly activities outside of clinical practice or professional practice. Examples of scholarly activities include attending conferences, seminars, journal club, grand rounds, morbidity and mortality meetings, interdisciplinary committees, quality improvement committees, and any other opportunities available at your site, within your community, or nationally.

You are required to post one scholarly activity while you are in the BSN program, which should be documented by the end of this course. In addition to this submission, you are required to be involved and contribute to interdisciplinary initiatives on a regular basis.

In Topic 10, you will submit a summary report of your scholarly activity. You may use the “Scholarly Activity Summary” resource to help guide this assignment.

NRS-490-RS-ScholarlyActivitySummary.docx