Tag: Cost Control and Management AccountingOsmania University b.com Notes

Integrated reporting in corporate communication is a “process that results in communication, most visibly a periodic “integrated report”, about value creation over time. An integrated report is a concise communication about how an organization’s strategy, governance, performance and prospects lead to the creation of value over the short, medium and long term”.

Integrated Reporting brings together material information about an organisation’s strategy, governance, performance and prospects in a way that reflects the commercial, social and environmental context within which it operates. It leads to a clear and concise articulation of your value creation story which is useful and relevant to all stakeholders.

But is not only about reporting; Integrated Reporting encompasses Integrated Thinking.  It is as much about how companies do business and how they create value over the short, medium and long term as it is about how this value story is reported.

It means the integrated representation of a company’s performance in terms of both financial and other value relevant information. Integrated Reporting provides greater context for performance data, clarifies how valuable relevant information fits into operations or a business, and may help make company decision making more long-term. While the communications that result from IR will be of benefit to a range of stakeholders, they are principally aimed at providers of financial capital allocation decisions.

IR helps to complete financial and sustainability reports. A framework has been published, but some questions remain in order to know how to apply it. Do we need a new report? Do we need one report ? Will this report be useful for investors, and for other stakeholders? Other questions could have been raised, such as who is really working for an integrated reporting, and who has interests in it.

There are a multitude of benefits associated with Integrated Reporting – both within an organisation and from an external perspective.

• Clearer articulation of strategy and business model.
• Encouraging your organisation to think in an integrated way.
• A single report that is easy to access, clear and concise.
• Linking of non-financial performance more directly to the business.
• Better identification of risk and opportunities.
• Improved internal processes leading to a better understanding of the business and improved decision-making process.
• Creating value for stakeholders through identification and measurement of non-financial factors.

Long-term benefits

Integrated reporting offers a more cohesive and efficient approach to corporate reporting across the short, medium and long-term, says Howitt. Academic and other research on adopting non-financial reporting demonstrates evidence of these benefits:

• Lower costs of raising capital
• A more stable long-term investor base
• Higher share price

Advantages:

Performance

This area of IR addresses how an organisation has performed against its strategy and what are its key outcomes. These outcomes can be internal or external for example, revenue, cash flow, customer satisfaction, brand loyalty, environmental impacts, etc.

Business model

An organisation’s business model is ‘its system of transforming inputs, through its business activities, into outputs and outcomes that aims to fulfil the organisation’s strategic purposes and create value over the short, medium and long term’ (IIRC). Many of the performance management models are particularly relevant here: for example, the value chain explicitly sets out inputs, processes and outputs and requires organisations to understand how value is added so that profits can be made. If a company does not understand where it adds value then the company is existing in a temporary state of good fortune. It is making profits now, but does not understand why, so chance of continued success must low.

Opportunities and Risks

These must cover both internal and external matters. The traditional SWOT analysis usually categorises opportunities and threats (risks) as external, but it is essential to also look internally. A weakness (for example arising from gaps in new product development) is a risk to future revenues.

A shut-down decision is that the firm is temporarily suspending production. It does not mean that the firm is going out of business. The shut Down decision depends on Shut Down Point. The shutdown point denotes the exact moment when a company’s revenue is equal to its variable costs.

A Shutdown point is a position of operation at which a company is receiving no advantage for continuing operations Thus, decides to shut down temporarily or in some cases permanently.

Loss-making segments of a business such as products, customers, and locations can be a significant drain on the resources of an organization.

Keeping a segment of business that is consistently generating a loss can be hard to justify, especially if its economics are unlikely to improve in the future.

Shutdown decisions can, however, be daunting for a business because of the time and resources invested in the failing enterprise. Shutdown problems should also consider the long-term implications of the decision.

The shutdown point denotes the exact moment when a company’s revenue is equal to its variable costs. Variable costs such as wages, production supplies, etc. It results from the combination of output and price where the company earns just enough revenue to cover its total variable costs.

Reasons of shut down production

• Financial problem
• Fall in demand
• Change in technology
• Inadequate availability of raw material
• High rate of taxes
• Recession in market
• Mismanagement

Shutdown Point

Theoretically, a business should discontinue any activity that does not generate sufficient funds to pay for its expenses in the long term (i.e., positive net cash flow).

When assessing shutdown problems, it is essential to consider only the relevant costs of business activity.

Examples of relevant costs include:

• Direct fixed costs which are avoidable in case of a closure.
• Variable expenses such as direct material and direct labor.
• Opportunity cost of continuing a business activity.

Examples of non-relevant costs include:

• Sunk cost (e.g., cost of machinery).
• Non-cash expenses (e.g., depreciation)
• Committed expenses which are unavoidable;
• ‘One-off’ revenues and expenses (e.g., sale of machinery, redundancy payments, etc.) that do not reflect the underlying profitability of the business.

Types of Shutdown Points

The length of a shutdown can be temporary or permanent, this depends on the nature of the economic conditions which is leading to the shutdown. For the non-seasonal goods, in an economic recession, this may reduce the demand from the consumers, after forcing a temporary shutdown (partially or totally) until the economy recovers from this.

Yet at other times, the demand dries up completely for the changing consumer preferences, also for the technological upgrade. For example, nobody produces the cathode-ray tube (CRT) televisions or computer monitors any longer, and thus this would be a losing prospect to open a factory such as these days to produce the same.

Other businesses also may experience the fluctuations or produce some goods year-round, while others are merely produced seasonally. For example, the Cadbury chocolate bars are produced year-round, while the Cadbury Cream Eggs are considered as a seasonal product. The main operations will be focused on the chocolate bars, which may remain operational year-round, while the cream egg operations will have to go through periods of a shutdown during the off-season as well.

The sell or process further decision is the choice of selling a product now or processing it further to earn additional revenue. This choice is based on an incremental analysis of whether the additional revenues to be gained will exceed the additional costs to be incurred as part of the additional processing work.

For example, if a green widget can be converted into a red widget at an incremental cost of Rs. 1.00 per unit, then processing further is a good idea as long as the incremental price gain to be achieved is at least Rs. 1.01 per unit.

The decision to sell now or process further boils down to which choice will result in higher profits. Split-off point refers to the moment in the manufacturing process when different products become separately identifiable.

If the incremental sales revenue is greater than incremental costs, it makes sense to process further. Otherwise, it is better to sell at the split-off point.

The sell or process further decision most commonly arises when two or more products are generated by a manufacturing process. At the point when the products can be split apart (the split-off point), there is a choice to sell the goods immediately or attempt to capture additional value by engaging in more processing. This decision may vary over time, based on changes in the market prices of a product at each stage of processing. If the market price declines for a later-stage product, it can make more sense to sell it without additional processing. Conversely, if the market price increases for a later-stage product, the better choice may be to continue with additional processing in order to reap higher profits.

Example

Hyderabad XYZ Company manufactures three products. In one production batch, the company incurs Rs.25,000 manufacturing costs up to the split off-point (the point in the manufacturing process when the products can be separately identified). The following summarizes the further processing costs beyond the split-off point and ultimate sales value.

The company can sell the products at split-off point. The expected sales revenues at split-off point are: Product 1 – Rs.24,000, Product 2 – Rs.8,000, Product 3 – Rs.7,000. Which products should be sold at split-off point and which products should be processed further?

Solution:

Product 1 should be sold at split-off point. The increase in sales revenue amounting to Rs.66,000 (i.e., from Rs.24,000 to Rs.90,000) is less than the costs to process the product further (Rs.72,000). Hence, it is better to sell the product at split-off point than process it further. Product 2 and Product 3 could be processed further since it will result in incremental profits.

Special order pricing is the price which the company can offer to their customers due to the large quantity or building a good relationship with customers in order to make potential next order. Due to these reasons, the company will try to offer a special price which is usually below the standard price.

One short-term decision that businesses continuously have to make is whether or not to accept special orders. This decision can prove somewhat of a complication to companies because they do not anticipate it when creating their yearly budget.

Special order pricing is a technique used to calculate the lowest price of a product or service at which a special order may be accepted and below which a special order should be rejected. Usually, a business receives special orders from customers at a price lower than normal. In such cases, the business will not accept the special order if it can sell all its output at normal price. However when sales are low or when there is idle production capacity, special orders should be accepted if the incremental revenue from special order is greater than incremental costs.

A company is producing, on average, 10,000 units of product A per month despite having 30% more capacity. Costs per unit of product A are as follows:

The company received a special order of 2,000 units of product A at Rs. 17.00 per unit from a new customer. Should the company accept the special order, provided that the customer has agreed to pay the variable selling expenses in addition to the price of the product?

Solution

The increment cost per unit for the special order is calculated as:

To further determine if you should accept a special order or not, use the contribution margin approach to do your analysis. This analysis will ascertain if the order will lead to a profit or loss. Follow these steps;

1. Determine the contribution margin per unit

The formula for calculating the contribution margin per unit is:

Order Price – Variable Costs per unit.

Exclude irrelevant costs like fixed costs from the calculation.

2. Determine the total Contribution Margin

You can determine this by multiplying the contribution margin per unit by the number of units in the special order.

3. To determine Profit or Loss, less any Incremental Fixed Costs from the Contribution Margin

If there are any incremental fixed costs, you’ll have to subtract them from the contribution margin. But if there are no fixed costs, your contribution margin is your total profit. It’s that simple.

4. Decide whether or not to accept the Job

The general rule is to take the job if it generates a profit and decline if it incurs a loss.

Providing a Framework for Evaluation:

Budgeting provides a basis to evaluate the performance of different departments. A comprehensive budget, properly developed, will contain initially organisational goals and expectations and subsequently can be used as an effective evalu­ation technique.

Acceptance and Cooperation:

Successful budgeting also requires that budgets should be accepted by the people who must execute them. Budgeting should have the active cooperation of the entire organisation from the top to the bottom. Cooperation for the budget can be achieved in a number of ways.

Coordinating Business Activities:

Budgeting needs to coordinate all the individual budgets into an integrated plan as each budget has certain implications for the other budgets. There must be coordination between sales, production, purchasing, personnel budgets.

Efficient Organisation:

Preparation of Budget and its operation requires efficient, adequate and best organisation. Therefore, a budgeting system should always be supported by a sound organisational structure demarcating clearly the lines of authority and responsibility.

Moreover, there should be true delegation of authority from top to lower levels of management so that executives at all levels may get the opportunity to make best decisions and get themselves involved in budget making exercise.

Reasonable Flexibility:

The budgeting programme should contain reasonable flexibility if the situation so demands. However, it should be noted that too much flexibility and too much tightness are both undesirable. Too much flexibility will weaken the cost control and the budget will become inoperative. Similarly, too much rigidity not permitting reasonable deviations will create problems and restrictions in the implementation of the budget. If conditions have changed making the estimates and budgets inaccurate, the budgets should be revised.

Communicating the Budgets:

The success of a comprehensive budgeting programme depends on communication of individual budgets to the different units in the organisation. The basic point is that the preparation of the budget is of no value unless it is known to the person for whom it is meant. Managers are not responsible for budget unless the budget is communicated clearly, concisely and in an authoritative manner to them.

Accurate Forecasting of Business Activities:

Forecasting is a prerequisite in a budgeting process. It is not only the starting point, but is also critical to the development of an accurate budget.

An Adequate, Planned and Reliable Accounting System:

There should be a proper flow of accurate and timely information in the business which is ‘must’ for the preparation of budgets. The finance department should continuously supply financial data on the basis of which budget estimates and forecasts are to be made. If the data are wrong all the estimates will be wrong and the very objectives of budget will be misguiding.

Formation of Budget Committee:

It is the Budget Committee that receives the forecasts and targets of each department as well as periodic reports and finalizes the final acceptable targets in form of Mater Budget. The Budget Committee also approves the departmental budgets. It is imperative that opportunities must be provided to the executives of all the departments for their participation in the process of budget making.