discussion-answer the main question and reply two

Description

Your course has presented both theory and application materials through videos, literature research, and discussion sessions with your peers and your professor.

Describe (in no less than 200 words), how the process of working with your consulting client (or working with your team on the case analysis) relates to at least one topic from the course’s content.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6&v=IrtyNbcfqP4

First Post:

Respond to the question thoroughly. This is a formal assignment with a minimum of 200-250 words.
It should include at least one reference from relevant peer-reviewed journal articles and/or books found within the online LIRN library or other reputable sources.
These must be properly cited in APA format. Remember you can also use your textbook.
See your Course Summary for due dates.

Second and Third Posts:

Reply to at least two classmates’ posts. Your response to your classmate’s discussion needs to be substantive, meaning it should add something new to the original comment, including a level of depth that enriches the discussion (i.e. reflecting on their response, applying their comment to the workplace, the literature, etc.).
Your professor will reply to student posts and may also ask questions of the student/s, please be vigilant and address his or her concerns by replying back to your professor’s comment to your post to acknowledge understanding.

Haven Neighborhood Services (HNS), as a small-sized, growing not-for-profit organization, does not have an established accounting system for the organization or a staff with accounting experience or knowledge being responsible for its accounting function. During our meeting with the client, we informed the executive director the importance of having the accounting system being properly established. As we learned in the class, standard costs can be used for control purposes outside of the formal accounting system (Blocher et al, 2019). It is very important for HNS to set up budgets and keep track of its spending. Our client mentioned its goal of obtaining more government grants in order to facilitate its expansion. We emphasized the importance of its fiscal accountability because grantors view it as one of the major considerations of awarding grant contracts. Moreover, we went through the activity based costing, which allows the client to charge costs incurred for different programs as well as to allocation overhead costs among those programs. By using examples, the client began to understand the cost drivers and the need for the precise approach of tracking costs. This will be found helpful especially for grant funded programs because often times post-award audits are required as part of grant contracts.

Reference

Blocher, E. J., Stout, D. E., Juras, P. E., & Cokins, G. (2019). Cost management: A strategic emphasis. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

Haven Neighborhood Services is a small-sized not-for-profit organization, which focuses on helping low-to-moderate income individuals and families purchase a home. Majority of operations was run by its Executive Director, Erika Toriz. With the growing of organization, Erika started to hire more full-time employees and thinking to obtain governmental funding to support the growing business (before that, her husband is the only financial resource the organization has). However, one of the key factor government concerns about is the planning and strategy the organization has, such as, what’s the budget for the next year and what is the budget vs. actual for prior year. In terms of the fact, Haven Neighborhood Services does not have any accounting procedures to track the budgets and spending. During our conference call with client, we have already informed Erika the importance of setting up accounting system to tracking budgets and spending to get the governmental funding. Furthermore, we learned the cost accounting during the course. And one of the hardest part of cost accounting is overhead allocation. A well-defined accounting system and procedures can definitely help a lot on accurate overhead allocation.