University of Northampton, January 2005
Management Accounting – Decision Making

The Balanced Scorecard - advantages and disadvantages

by

Matthias Kammerer

Document Summary

Part A

1. Preface... 2
2. Closure in January... 3
3. Closure in June... 6
4. Conclusion... 9

Part B

1. The Balanced Scorecard... 10
2. Referencing List and Bibliography... 15

Part A: Case study Farmlea Ltd.

1. Preface

At present Farmlea Ltd is involved in publishing, printing and distribution of catalogues and manuals. Since the management has already decided to close the printing and distribution departments Farmlea Ltd wants to focus only on publishing, while the other activities can be transferred to Langdale Ltd. In the first part of my assignment I want to deal with the only remaining controversial issue, whether the closure should take place at the beginning of the year on 1st January or 5 month later on 1st June.
Although it is not directly necessary for this decision problem to show all incurring costs of the departments in every month from January till June, in my opinion it gives a better general survey of the problem as well as a more detailed view where costs arise. I also included not directly relevant costs which do not change if closure takes place either in January or in June. For the sake of completeness I integrated those costs in my calculation, although they do not affect the final decision (e.g. material or occupancy costs of the publishing department). What happens in he time after June month must not to be regarded, because then the situation in both cases is exactly the same (departments are closed, staff is transferred, equipment is sold…).
The given costs for a typical month (see chart 1) have to be adapted by some further information to receive the relevant costs for the decision.

Chart 1: typical monthly costs of Farmlea Ltd (initial situation) [chart only in downloadfile]

I will show the calculations for staff-, material-, occupancy-costs and depreciation separately for a closure in January and June by dealing with one issue after another and at the end of each closure-scenario I will summarise all relevant calculations in a survey-chart.

2. Closure in January

Salaries & wages

The staff in publishing department remains (except a vacant position which is replaced by one staff member from the other departments who earns £100 more per month). Furthermore, two experts from printing are transferred to publishing for £1,750 each when closure takes place. Because the other departments are closed no salaries have to be paid for them, but a redundancy pay amounting to twice the normal monthly salary is due:

Chart 2: Staff costs January till June [chart only in downloadfile]

Materials

The normal monthly costs in publishing remain. The other departments are closed, but in printing existing stock can be sold to Langdale Ltd which gives rise to a positive cash flow of £12,000 (there are no relevant costs for this material, because it was bought in the past for £19,500 what must be seen as sunk costs). In distribution there is an existing delivery contract for January and February (£500 for each month) which can be cancelled by a one-off payment of £300 (then no further costs of buying the goods would arise). Another possibility is cancelling just the February delivery for £100 (i.e. saving the £500 for February) and selling the January delivery to Langdale for £390, so that in total costs of £210 accrue (£500 - £390 in January + £100 in February). Finally Farmlea can take both deliveries and sell them to Langdale (£500 - £390 = cost of £110 in both month). The second alternative seems to be the one with the lowest cash outflows and is taken for granted in later calculations.

Chart 3: Material costs January till June [chart only in downloadfile]

Occupancy costs

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