Question

Horner Work Wear, Inc., supplies uniforms for a variety of businesses .. Collin Hoffman is a new intern in the Accounting Department at Horner. To expand sales, the company is considering paying commissions to its sales force. The controller, John Wallace, asks Collin to complete an analysis assuming sales would increase 25% under the proposed sales commission plan. This analysis should include 1) the new breakeven sales figure and 2) the operating profit under the new sales commission plan.

Collin does his best to perform the analysis. He is not exactly sure what he is doing but he does not want to appear like he does not understand accounting. After he gets his preliminary analysis finished, he calls his friend, Meghan Peyton, who is an account­ing analyst at Scrubs and More, a competing uniform supplier. He knows Meghan from a church group and figures he can trust her. He tells her he is working on a new project and asks her if they can meet for dinner later, where he can ask her advice.

At dinner, Collin confesses to Meghan that he really does not know if he did his analy­sis correctly. Meghan assures him that she has worked on similar things at her company. She asks him if they can go over the analysis together. He readily agrees because this is just the type of help he had hoped to get. He shows her the spreadsheet he has been working on; the two of them discuss each item on the analysis. Collin explains his reason­ing behind each calcu1lation and his data assumptions. Meghan tells him that his analysis is thorough and agrees that he has done it all correctly as far as she can tell.

Now confident in his work, Collin turns in the proposed sales commission plan analysis the following day. His report ends with a recommendation that the new sales commission plan be undertaken, since it will lead to a significant increase in operating income with only a small increase in breakeven sales. John Wallace glances through the report and is impressed with the appearance of the report; it looks professional and complete. Since John has a lot of other work tasks, he approves the new sales commission plan without any further analysis or investigation.

When he is booking some payroll entries the following week, Collin realizes that he made an error in the CVP analysis he did for the sales commission project. He failed to in­clude the monthly salaries of the sales staff in his computations. Collin is in a panic. If he tells John Wallace of his mistake, Collin is afraid he will not be offered a full-time position upon completion of his internship. Collin decides to keep quiet and not let the controller know of his error. He reasons that it is unlikely that the difference between what he pro­jected versus the actual expenses will be discovered since Horner does not create de­tailed monthly operating statements.

1. What do you think Collin should do?

2. Who do you feel is at fault in this case and why?

3. What would you do in this situation?

4. Have you ever been in a similar situation, if so explain?

Answer 1

1. Collin should highlight the mistake to John.

2. Collin has missed an important factor in his analysis and hence he us at fault. As John reviewed the work of Collin, who is newly hired intern, John is equally responsible for Collin's work.

3. I will discuss this with John and assure him that same will not be repeated in future and i will be more careful and diligent in my work.

4. Its a learning process, everyone does some mistakes and learn through them. Its completely fine to do mistakes at start of your career and learn a lesson which will take you long ahead.