For the purposes of this assignment, you are the accountant for an industrial property development company, Devprop Leasing Co., that typically develops warehouse and industrial complexes. The management of the company is preparing a standard-cost budget to aid in performance analysis of each property development ,and its various segments, over the projected project lifetime.
In this assignment you are required to prepare a relatively straight forward financial model, using the electronic spreadsheet MS Excel 2007' for Windows, that will assist in the preparation of this budget and aid in the performance analysis.It is intended that the budget will be used in the following ways;
- To provide an effective and efficient means of sensitivity analysis.
- To provide a means of supporting various management decision making processes including resource allocation, pricing, sourcing, product mix, financing, break even analysis etc.
- To provide for a flexible budget for input into the firm's accounting package to provide for analysis of actual over planned.
Your are required to create a number of spreadsheet worksheets that analyse, calculate or otherwise provide for specific functions/areas involved in the budgeting process.
Each spreadsheet worksheet will be used to provide supporting information for and automatically linked to other spreadsheet worksheets in order to provide an in-depth, "what-if", analysis of the budget and the firms and departmental operations.
Your model should be designed in a manner that requires the discretionary variables and other variable inputs to be changed in only one place2 for automatic updating all the required and supporting schedules etc. so as to provide timely meaningful analysis of various combinations and scenarios.
You are required to:
- Apply cell protection to all worksheet cells, whilst permitting the user to enter data in the input
worksheet only where appropriate and preventing the user from changing the output
worksheets;
- Use colour or shading to identify the unprotected areas;
- Provide the password used to protect those cells in the place provided on the Coversheet
before being lodged with the lecturer for assessment. However, whilst individual
worksheets must be protected, the workbook submitted for assessment SHOULD NOT be
protected.
- Prevent users from entering data that is inconsistent with the parameters and limits set out in
This assignment. Input cells can be controlled using the MS Excel Data Validation feature, and you may use other appropriate methods in calculated cells.
Each worksheet, including the discretionary variables spreadsheet(s), should be presented in a manner that conforms with the principles of good output design. In addition to any formatting thought necessary, the format of each worksheet would include (but not be limited to) a header showing the filename, worksheet name and current time and date, and a footer showing the page number and total pages. Reports should be clear, easy to read3 and understandable by a reasonably competent non-accounting manager familiar with basic generalised accounting information.
Each worksheet should also be designed in a manner that does not show zero values nor show negative/abnormal values when the parameters (discretionary values) change .
Consideration should be given to the fact that these reports are special purpose management accounting reports and are NOT external financial reports and therefore are NOT required to be prepared using formats etc. required in the relevant accounting standards.
However Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) are to be followed.