MAC PAST PAPER June 2008

Marga

i was doing this paper (or trying) and when checked the answers it all went completely wrong!

To calculate Production budget i believe the song goes like

Sales/Demand Forecast
Add Closing Stock
Less Opening Stock
Production needed.


In this paper we have


(a) Volume of enquiries budget June July August
Enquiries 210,000 230,000 105,000
Opening enquiries 27,000 30,000 20,000
Closing enquiries 30,000 20,000 2,000
Monthly enquiries processed 207,000 240,000 123,000
Reviews required 20,700 24,000 12,300
Total number or enquiries and reviews 227,700 264,000 135,300


where obviously they have add in the opening enquires and deducted the closing enquires....

Please tell me this is wrong as i am squeezing my brain to understand why would they do it all the way around???

Also because of this the rest of the quesions show different answers to my calculations ... although i have done the same as they do to get to their figures...

A-Vic

Yes and yes it messes with your head a bit

Rinske

Not sure if I'm on the right track here, as I haven't done MAC or this particular exam, but think about it this way.

In normal products, you create the closing stock in the period and you don't have to create the opening stock anymore, because they already exist.

With this one you don't create enquiries, but you deal with them.

Opening enquiries are outstanding from the previous period, so you have to deal with them.
Closing enquiries are enquiries received in this period, which have not been dealt with yet.

So in this case to get to the number of enquiries processed this week, you calculate the number received plus the previous period ones that were not closed as finished and the ones created this period that have not been finished, you deduct, as they have not been dealt with yet.

Hope that helps!

Marga

Rinske wrote: »

Not sure if I'm on the right track here, as I haven't done MAC or this particular exam, but think about it this way.

In normal products, you create the closing stock in the period and you don't have to create the opening stock anymore, because they already exist.

With this one you don't create enquiries, but you deal with them.

Opening enquiries are outstanding from the previous period, so you have to deal with them.
Closing enquiries are enquiries received in this period, which have not been dealt with yet.

So in this case to get to the number of enquiries processed this week, you calculate the number received plus the previous period ones that were not closed as finished and the ones created this period that have not been finished, you deduct, as they have not been dealt with yet.

Hope that helps!

Hi, i thought that too at the beggining guess it is right cause the Chief Assesor explained it

A very common mistake was the treatment of the enquiries brought forward and carried forward. This is possibly explained by the comparison with the calculation of required production when the business knows the sales, opening stock and closing stock. Candidates took the enquiries received, added the closing enquiries and deducted the opening enquiries. The correct logic would be to take the enquiries received in the month, add the opening enquiries and deduct the closing enquiries to arrive at the number of enquiries processed in the month. Even when candidates calculated the enquiries budget incorrectly, they could still achieve around 90% of the total marks available for the task.


I still am confused over the difference between this and a normal production budget i guess it is as you said we dont produce enquires we deal with them ...so in an example of for example decorating cakes that have been already produced somewhere else and we just decorate them we would add the opening and deduct the closing to know how many we decorate on the day ....

Rinske

Marga wrote: »

I still am confused over the difference between this and a normal production budget i guess it is as you said we dont produce enquires we deal with them ...so in an example of for example decorating cakes that have been already produced somewhere else and we just decorate them we would add the opening and deduct the closing to know how many we decorate on the day ....

I think I get why we get confused, but might be wrong here.

From sales to production budgets it's sales less opening stock plus closing stock, as that is the amount you want to produce in the period.

If you know what the production budget is, but you need to know the number of sales, it would be number in production plus opening stock minus closing stock, because that is the amount you sold.

As that sounds pretty confusing and probably doesn't help much. I'll try to use your cake decorating example:

If you have started your day with 5 decorated cakes (from yesterday, otherwise they would be old), and you sold 25 decorated cakes, but at the end of the day you have 10 decorated cakes left, you can calculate how many cakes you decorated:
25 - 5 + 10 = 30 cakes.
(Sales - opening stock + closing stock)

If you however know how many you cakes you decorated, but not how many you sold, you would work it the other way.
So if you started with 5 finished cakes, decorated 25 decorated cakes during the day and have 10 left over at the end of the day, you would have sold:
25 + 5 - 10 = 20 cakes.
(Production + opening stock - closing stock)

Does that help at all?