Projections play a significant role in the corporate climate for nearly all industries. Whether forecasting sales for the next fiscal year, demand for specific items, or otherwise, projections are necessary to account for needed raw materials, manpower, inventory, and much more. Projections of cash flow for projects are also important, especially for small to medium enterprises that are in a growth stage. Liquidity is usually at a premium for these companies so it is important for them to understand exactly how their investment in a project will affect their cash flows at any given point. Being able to meet cash needs is a critical part of running a successful business. One of the largest and most commonly made errors in estimating incremental cash flows is the exclusion of indirect costs. Managers have little trouble estimating capital expenses in regards to a new project. These are generally well understood, researched and accounted for. Though indirect costs are often overlooked, they can be significant. In Finance: Investments, Institutions, and Management, Stanley Eakins disc...
The two main issues in this case are the project analysis and financial forecasting. The project should be analyzed before doing the forecasting, because any recommendations on the project will affect financial forecasting for the next two years.
Financial ratios are "just a convenient way to summarize large quantities of financial data and to compare firms' performance" (Brealey & Myer & Marcus, 2003, p. 450). Financial ratios are very useful tools in order to determine the health of a company, help managers to make decision, and help to compare companies that belong to the same industry in order to know about their performance.
General Foods (GF) is in the process of evaluating Super as a new profit-increasing project for its business. Payback and Return on Funds Employed (ROFE) are the decision rules used currently by GF for project decisions. While these rules are helpful, they are flawed and do not take into account the time value of money when evaluating cash flows. Net present value is a more suited tool to evaluate projects because it takes into account discounting of future cash flows, evaluates liquidity through discount, selects the scenario that maximizes shareholder wealth, and considers all relevant incremental cash flows. Certain cash flows and costs for Super were either included or not in the financial worksheets presented to management. Flaws
Regardless of how departmental budgets are established, best practices in capital budgeting clearly state that all side-effects of a project must be included in cash-flow projections (Schiff, 1988 *2). In fact, transportation costs have a significant impact on cash-flows and also on the value of the project.
As the company investment is based on the profit generated in last year’s so the budget of the project will be defined after annual report is published which define the annual revenue of this company.
Projects are widely used by many organizations and government institutions in the course of conducting their business. One of the reasons for this is because they have been proven to be effective in initiating change and translating strategic programs into daily activities. However, it has been established that most projects fail to deliver on time, budget, and customer specifications. In most cases, this failure is caused by over-optimism by the project management team. This over-optimism commonly referred to as optimism bias can simply be defined as overestimating the projects benefits and conversely underestimating its cost and duration time. Research have portrayed that this is often caused by failure to properly identify, understand, and manage effectively the risk associated with the project therefore putting its success at jeopardy(Mott McDonald, 2002). Fortunately, this biasness can be detected and minimized during the project gateway process.
Overhead based on direct labor includes the cost of the Product Development Support Center, interest expenses, and general and administrative expenses. The Product Development Support Center failed to account for hours spent on each product, which will not only complicate the product cost calculations, but also the calculation of capitalization expenses later on. The Development Support Center will be most used during the peak (i.e. most hours) time of development for each product, and hours worked will probably be the best way to divvy up the costs of the support center. The money invested in the company is being used on developing each product right now. I figured interest would best be divvied up by hours to attribute the interest expense to the product using the most of the investment. Similar to the reasons stated before general and administrative costs are going to be associated with the most prominent product, and that is best seen through hours. (Figure A)
The 3 percent decline in sales causing a 21 percent decline in profits can be attributed to the identification of the accounting concept of operating leverage. Operating leverage is what business managers apply to boost small changes in revenue into sizable changes in profitability. Fixed cost is the force managers use to attain disproportionate changes between revenue and profitability. Therefore, when all costs are fixed every sales dollar contributes one dollar toward the potential profitability of a project. Once sales dollars cover fixed costs, each additional sales dollar represents pure profit. A small change in sales volume can significantly affect profitability (Edmonds, Tsay, & Olds, 2011). So, therefore, if sales volume increases,
Capital budgeting is one of the primary activities of a company. Most of the company uses capital budgeting for decision making process of selecting and evaluating long-term investment. The company have to make a right decision with respect to investment in fixed asset such as purchasing of new equipment and delivery vehicles, constructing additions to buildings and many more. The decision must be right because of the project involve huge amount of cash outflow and it is committed for many years.
Hansen, D., Mowen, M., & Guan, L., Cost Management: Accounting & Control 6th ed., Mason, Ohio: South-Western
One of the most important steps in the capital budgeting cycle is working out if the benefits of investing large capital sums outweigh the costs of these investments. The range of methods that business organisations use can be categorised in one of two ways: traditional methods and discounted cash flow techniques.
Accurately forecasting the cost of projects is vital to the survival of any business or organization. Cost estimators develop the cost information that business owners or managers, professional design team members, and construction contractors need to make budgetary and feasibility determinations. From an Owner's perspective the cost estimate may be used to determine the project scope or whether the project should proceed. According to the U.S. Department of Labor there were about 198,000 cost estimators in 1994. That of which 58% work in the construction industry, 17% employed in manufacturing industries, and the remaining 25% elsewhere. From this we could conclude that a great deal of cost estimation lies in the construction industry, where multi-million dollar contracts are formed after a thorough cost estimation.
Time-phased project work is the basis for project cost control. Work package duration is used to develop the project network. Further, the time-phased budgets for work packages are timetabled to establish fiscal measures for each phase throughout the project. The time-phased budgets are to emulate the real cash needs of the budget, which will be used for project cost control. This information is useful to estimate cash outflows. The project manager's attention is on when the costs are to occur, when the budgeted cost is earned, and when the actual cost materializes. This information is made up to measure project schedule and cost variances (Gray & Larson, 2005). The following are typical types of costs found in a project:
a. 1. What sources of capital should be included when you estimate Harry Davis’s weighted average cost of capital (WACC)?
Managing an organization’s financial operation requires a good understanding of the economy and ways to maximize revenue. For an organization to operate on a daily basis, adequate cash flow is required. Poor cash management within an organization might make it hard for the organization to function because there may be shortage of cash in case of inconsistences in the market. In most companies, management is interested in the company 's cash inflows and outflows because these determines the availability of cash necessary to pay its financial obligations. Management also uses this information to determine problems with company’s liquidity, a project’s rate of return or value and the timeliness of cash flows into and out of projects (used as inputs