MANAGERIAL ACCOUNTING PAPER

Jackson County Senior Services is a nonprofit organization devoted to providing essential services to seniors who live in their own homes within the Jackson County area. Three services are provided for seniors—home nursing, Meals On Wheels, and housekeeping. In the home nursing program, nurses visit seniors on a regular basis to check on their general health and to perform tests ordered by their physicians. The Meals On Wheels program delivers a hot meal once a day to each senior enrolled in the program. The housekeeping service provides weekly housecleaning and maintenance services. Data on revenue and expenses for the past year follow:

Total

Home Nursing

Meals On Wheels

House

keeping

  Revenues

$

900,000 

$

260,000 

$

400,000

$

240,000  

  Variable expenses

490,000 

120,000 

210,000

160,000  

  Contribution margin

410,000 

140,000 

190,000 

80,000  

  Fixed expenses:

    Depreciation

68,000 

8,000 

40,000 

20,000  

    Liability insurance

42,000 

20,000 

7,000 

15,000  

    Program administrators’ salaries

115,000 

40,000 

38,000 

37,000  

    General administrative overhead*

180,000 

52,000 

80,000 

48,000  

  Total fixed expenses

405,000 

120,000 

165,000 

120,000  

  Net operating income (loss)

$

5,000 

$

20,000 

$

25,000 

$

(40,000) 

*Allocated on the basis of program revenues.

     The head administrator of Jackson County Senior Services, Judith Miyama, is concerned about the organization’s finances and considers the net operating income of $5,000 last year to be too small. (Last year’s results were very similar to the results for previous years and are representative of what would be expected in the future.) She feels that the organization should be building its financial reserves at a more rapid rate in order to prepare for the next inevitable recession. After seeing the above report, Ms. Miyama asked for more information about the financial advisability of discontinuing the housekeeping program.

     The depreciation in housekeeping is for a small van that is used to carry the housekeepers and their equipment from job to job. If the program were discontinued, the van would be donated to a charitable organization. Depreciation charges assume zero salvage value. None of the general administrative overhead would be avoided if the housekeeping program were dropped, but the liability insurance and the salary of the program administrator would be avoided.

Required:

1a.

What is the impact on net operating income by discontinuing housekeeping program? (Input the amount as a positive value. Omit the "$" sign in your response.)

  Decrease in net operating income by

$  

1b.

Should the housekeeping program be discontinued?

2.

Would a segmented income statement format be more useful to management in assessing the long-run financial viability of the various services.