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
$902,900
$260,000
$401,800
$241,100
Variable expenses
486,300
118,700
208,200
159,400
Contribution margin
416,600
141,300
193,600
81,700
Fixed expenses:
Depreciation
65,000
6,900
39,600
18,500
Liability insurance
39,800
19,800
6,200
13,800
Program administrators’
salaries
113,800
39,900
37,800
36,100
General administrative
overhead*
176,000
50,200
78,800
47,000
Total fixed expenses
394,600
116,800
162,400
115,400
Net operating income (loss)
$22,000
$24,500
$31,200
$(33,700)
*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
$22,000 last year to be razor-thin. (Last year’s results were very
similar to the results for previous years and are representative of
what would be expected in the future.) She feels that the
organization should be building its financial reserves at a more
rapid rate in order to prepare for the next inevitable recession.
After seeing the above report, Ms. Miyama asked for more
information about the financial advisability of perhaps
discontinuing the housekeeping program.
The depreciation in housekeeping is for
a small van that is used to carry the housekeepers and their
equipment from job to job. If the program were discontinued, the
van would be donated to a charitable organization. None of the
general administrative overhead would be avoided if the
housekeeping program were dropped, but the liability insurance and
the salary of the program administrator would be avoided.
Requirement 1:
(a)
What is the amount of the change in net income if the
housekeeping unit is dropped? (Input the amount as positive
value. Omit the “$” sign in your response.)
(b)
Should the housekeeping program be discontinued?
Requirement 2:
Recast the above data in a format that would be more useful to
management in assessing the long-run financial viability of the
various services. (Enter all amounts as positive numbers
except for Net Operating Income which should be indicated by a
minus sign if the result is a loss. Omit the “$” sign in your
response.)