Hi All,
Please see attached my entire assignment so far, I would love any feedback – especially on step 6!
Thank you
Author: millygrech
Assignment 2 Step 5 – Chapter 7
What are a firms reasons for budgeting? I know I say I am going to create a budget it’s generally to see how much I can save, or how much I am planning on spending, do I stick to my budget? Generally not, come the end of the month I should think ‘oh I should have x amount of $$ saved, and then I look at my bank account and I end up thinking ‘oh I spent x amount of $$ on food and clothes’. Maybe its time I retrain myself and cut a plan and stick to my budget. Short term planning can be an important concept of budgeting, it is important to be able to foresee any potential issues. For example I might outline a monthly budget and see that by the end of the month with all the my spending I don’t have enough money for my car repayment, knowing this I am then able to adjust my budget and cut some other things that maybe aren’t as important. With the next steps I found it difficult to relate to them when considering myself a firm, so I have decided to add another department to my firm, my partner. Within our firm (or household) co-ordination, communication and delegation is (or would be if we had a budget) key! Our budget will not work if we have different goals. My goal could be to buy a new house in the next 5 year and my partners goal could be to renovate our current house as we are saving money we haven’t co-ordinated very well, I would be saving as much as I possibly could and he could be spending ever dollar as it hits our bank account, co-ordination then goes hand in hand with communication, If we don’t communicate we may never realise that we both have been working towards different goals, obviously I would see what is going on but if I don’t talk to him about it, in 5 years’ time when I’m planning on buying that house and I check the bank and there is nothing there because everything has been spent on something else there will cause friction between the different departments (or us, since we aren’t actually a firm). Once our firm is all on the same page – we have cut a short term plan, we have co-ordinated and communicated our goals our next important step is delegating. It would not be practical for me to say, right well I’ll save every cent I earn, and then in five years’ time I’ll buy a house and move without having my other departments (my partner) involved or delegating those jobs. When thinking about buying a house generally as partners everything is done together, there isn’t exactly much of ‘this is your job and this is my job’ however for the purpose of using delegating I have decided to split the process up a little. I might delegate for the other apartment to attend open homes or inspections of the houses we could potentially but or I could delegate the saving to the other department by saying well we will use this much money (my wage) to buy everything and we will use all the money your department makes (my partners weekly wage) as saving and put that money away. And our last step is motivation! In our case our motivation would be buying a house, however in large firms there might be different motivations for different departments, there could be positive motivations such as commissions or bonuses, or even simply seeing the progress the firm has made since having the budget, whereas there might also be negative motivators, where if firms don’t meet their budgets peoples jobs and sometimes entire departments get cut.
On a much larger scale than thinking of myself and my partner as a firm, I decided to think of a large firm that I used to work in when thinking about master budgets. The company I worked in was split into several different divisions such as underground mining, open cut mining (which then had divisions in itself such as Northern, central, southern, electrical and workshops), IT, HR, Fleet and so many more departments. I only worked as a trainee so I was never much involved with budgets, however there was always talk, your hours have to be cut, your pay has to be cut, we can’t have that many guys working on the one job all due to restrictions each department had, so I can only assume that since each different department had a budget they all eventually tied up into to master budget.
It is important for mangers of a firm to be able to plan a budget to gather a general understanding of what direction their firm is heading in. Chapter 7 was all about preparing budgets and seeing have they can be used as an advantage to help a firm grow.
Assignment 2 Step 3
Hi All,
Please see below my spreadsheet, I would appreciate any feedback .
Company Spreadsheet 2017 Advanced Share Registry
My first challenge for completing step three was finding the motivation! Originally, I had told myself I would smash out my assignment and have no need to stress about it, and then the next thing I knew people were posting on the Facebook group, how do we submit steps 3 & 4 or saying that they were looking for feedback and I hadn’t even stated restating.
However, once I did find the motivation I didn’t find the restating that difficult. Following the order in which Maria posted her videos I started with the movements in equity. I had no problem restating my movements in equity simply because there was nothing to classify. I had nothing to classify into operational or financial as all my transactions fell under transactions with owners.
Moving on I started restating my Balance sheet. I found my items relatively easy to classify into operating and financial. As my company operates in shares it requires a large amount of cash for its operating activities with this in mind I changed my operating cash and cash equivalents to 5% for operating costs rather than 1%. I did/do have a problem making my NOA & NFA Match I have every year except for 2015 matching, I am $3 out and cannot for the life of me work out how I am $3 out!
When restating my financial performance I did struggle a little bit having my figures match that in the movements in equity, however after a little bit of fiddling and reassessing my classification of a couple of items I was able to have my figures match.
Assignment 2 step 2
Hi All,
Please see below my step 2 – I would appreciate any feedback!
Step 2
Chapter 6
Costs are incurred everywhere in a firm. The first sentence of 6.1 Cost objects got me thinking straight away. If course they are, I work as a receptionist at a real estate agency in Mackay, every single thing we do costs money, from my weekly wage to the $100,000 marketing accounts each agent has, are these expenses generating a greater value for our firm? I like to think so, I believe that the expense on administration wages is justified by the greater value of our agents not having to do admin tasks such as preparing and sending off contract, by us being a time saver and our knowledge being of assistance to the agents. Everything in the firm is considered a cost, the pens and paper, the computers we sit at, the phones we use to make and receive calls, to the hundreds of thousands of dollars that are spent on advertising, but where do these costs go?
When considering the firm that I work in and thinking about the information about various costs that a firm may collect, the first cost I thought of was advertising, and where this cost is linked to, generally it is linked to advertising recovered which means to us that the vendor/seller is going to be paying for that cost. Once a month we print a report to show every charge linked to ‘advertising recovered’ so that our manager is able to keep track of what and how much is being spent.
A key concept of chapter 6 that stood out to me was direct and indirect costs. I like Martins analogy that a direct cost is like a magnet, a cost that can be clearly seen to ‘stick’ to these cost objects, where as in indirect cost does not have the clear link. Once again thinking about the firm that I currently work in, my weekly administration wage would be considered a direct cost whereas things such as the rent of our building, telephone expenses and stationary are all considered indirect. The concept on Absorption and carriable costing also confused me, I could tell you what absorbing a cost is and what a variable costing is however I feel like there was no real explanation as to why you may attach both the indirect & direct costs to a product (absorption costing) or why variable costing attaches only variable costs. Is one costing considered better? Or why would a company prefer to use one method over the other?
What is the difference between a fixed ad a variable cost? I really liked reading Martins example of his son’s gigs. How the fixed cost was a no matter what cost and the variable cost is that if x happens you’ll get y.
Cost-volume-profit analysis was interesting to me, in Real Estate, once a property is sold we send out a commission invoice. Internally that commission invoice is broken down, straight away the agent has to pay the company 8% of the commission to cover the overhead costs that the firm so that would be considered a fixed cost, however the agent can then use their commission to purchase more advertising materials such as sold signs, sold letters, sold flyers, the amount that they spend is entirely up to them, making it a variable cost.
Throughout the chapter I learnt that it is important for managers to monitor to costs in their firms in order to help them plan for the future.
Assignment 2 Step 1
Assignment 1 – Draft
Hi All,
I would appreciate any feedback on my assignment also if you comment with your blog I would love to provide you with feedback too! you can email me the feedback sheet at amelia.grech@cqumail.com
Accounting assignment Steps 1 – 5
Advanced Share Registry – My Company
My company is Advanced Share Registry.
http://www.advancedshare.com.au/
The Advanced Share Registry operates in Perth WA, and has been since May 1996. They provide registry services to listed and unlisted clients Australia wide and have built their companies reputation on by being efficient and cost effective particularly for small businesses.
Registry services act as a agent for a company that you are a member of, their duties may include transferring shares, updating your personal information with a company, obtaining dividend and voting on a resolution.
Within my companies directors only 1 of 4 directors have an accounting background. Within the company there are 23 employees, 13 of these employees are female workers which make up 57% of all employees however none of these women are in senior executive roles or are a board member.
This year my company had an increase to its profits and dividends, however, conditions are still challenging. The chairman Simon Cato was pleased to report continuing significant profit and declared and payment of a franked dividend of $2.25 per share which is 55cents more than their previous corresponding year.
My company has a board policy of returning profits to shareholders as they have a significant cash balance. They have $1.5mil in property investments and no debt.
They have installed in house printing, folding and enveloping equipment which has allowed them to take full advantage of the green stock market rebound that occurred during 2016. Green stock is shares of a Company whose primary business is beneficial to the environment.
I am struggling to understand a lot of my report – I know nothing about shares, and to me they are super boring and extra confusing! Apart from in the report there is not much more information I can find on my company.
My Annual Reports:
The girl that can walk on water
Hi and welcome to my Blog!
I thought I would start with a little bit about me.
I have been working as a ‘Director of First Impressions’ at a top Real Estate in Mackay, I have been here for just over a year and I absolutey love it! I have learnt so much about the industry and also I have been able to grow as a person and have built some great friendships with the people I work with.
When I’m not working I love to Ski, I have been skiing with my family for as long as I can remember. I spent many of my weekends growing up camping at Lake Elphinstone. I competed in Barefoot Waterskiing for just about 10 years, My first National Campionships I competed when I was 12 in Sub Junior Girls. Since then I Competed at a World Championships in Waco Texas, and I also was the Australia Junior Girls Champion in 2013.
I no longer compete in waterskiing, however I still do enjoy to go ski and camp just for fun, I am lucky enough to live (still at home) right on the pioneer river, so I don’t have to far to travel at all.
I also enjoy travelling, I have been lucky to travel to a lot of places in Australia, I have been to Vanuatu, the U.S.A Twice, to Fiji(on our second day the cyclone hit, it was difficult completing our dive certificate after that), I am about to head to Bali in April and hopefully to the U.S.A again and Canada at the end of year so I can finally see snow!
Since I travelled so much I spent a lot of time away from school, and did not really put as much into my school work as I probably should have. I am nervous about a starting Uni, Studying, Assignments and Exams but as Neale Donald Walsh said ‘Life begins at the end of your comfort zone’
Anyone that wants to contact me whether it be for study advise, meeting up, or you just want to say hi, you can contact me via my uni email address- amelia.grech@cqumail.com.
My amazing family and partner have always pushed me to pursue me dreams, so here I am, starting my first year studying for my Bachelor of Property!
Walking on Water! 