Reference no: EM132543126

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 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $900,000                    $260,000           $400,000                        $240,000

Variable expenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490,000                        120,000                  210,000                       160,000

Contribution margin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410,000                          140,000                 190,000                        80,000

Fixed expenses:

Depreciation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68,000                               8,000                   40,000                       20,000

Liability insurance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42,000                                20,000                    7,000                      15,000

Program administrators' salaries . . . . . 115,000                                40,000                     38,000                37,000

General administrative overhead* . . . . 180,000                                  52,000                  80,000                     48,000

Total fi xed expenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405,000                           120,000                   165,000               120,000

Net operating income (loss) . . . . . . . . . $ 5,000                               $ 20,000                    $ 25,000             $ (40,000)

• The head administrator of Jackson County Senior Services, Judith Miyama, is concerned about the organization's finances and considers the net operating income of $5,000 last year to be too small. (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 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. Depreciation charges assume zero salvage value. 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.

Required:

Question 1. Should the housekeeping program be discontinued? Explain. Show computations to support your answer.

Question 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.