1. Fact Pattern: Question 1:
You currently work for an automotive parts supply store. Your company is growing, and is considering expansion. The company currently has three locations (North, South, and Central) in one state, and wants to consider expanding within the same state. You have been presented with the sales figures for the last three years for each of your locations. Based on this information, you're tasked with analyzing current sales.
You have decided to investigate the trend in sales over the past three years. Respond fully to the following questions regarding this task:
- Explain, based on material covered in this class, your approach to setting up your worksheet and organizing the data.
- Explain how you will visually represent the data for the sales of the individual stores and for the time period shown. You want to show the change in sales for each store over time for the past three years.
- Once you have finished the above tasks, you plan to send the Excel workbook to your boss for evaluation. Your boss is not an Excel expert, and you are concerned that your formulas might accidentally be deleted or altered. Describe the methods you will use to assure that this does not happen.
2. Fact Pattern: Question 2:
You own your own small party supply and rental business. You maintain an Excel list of potential customers and clients who have rented or purchased from you in the past two years. The list includes both physical mailing addresses and e-mail addresses for each person listed. You have a "category" code to show whether the contact is a client. If they have done business with you, they show a code of "CUST" for customer. If they are potential customers who have not yet purchased or rented from you, they are coded as "PROS" for prospect.
You want to grow your business, and feel the best way to do this is to solicit additional business from past customers. Respond fully to the following questions regarding this task:
A - (TCO 4) You want to be able to separate your customers from your prospects. Explain how you would do this using Excel.
B - (TCO 8) You want to send a letter to each customer, but you don't want it to sound impersonal. Explain how you might achieve this using your Excel file.
C - (TCO 7) If you get the results you expect to get from contacting your customers, you want to be able to do this every month. Explain how you might use Excel to automate the process of separating your list as you did in Part A.
D - (TCO 6) You anticipate that your income will increase by 2 percent over the next two months for each 50 letters sent. You want to gauge the impact on your sales of mailing 50, 100, 150, and 200 letters. What Excel tools would you use to evaluate the possible outcome of mailing at each level? Explain.
3. Fact Pattern: Question 3:
Your company is planning a party for employees, and you have been asked to set up a spreadsheet to track the attendees and to calculate the associated cost. Each employee is allowed to bring one guest to the party. There are 50 employees in your company. The spreadsheet needs to be set up when the invitations are distributed so that you can begin recording the reservations as soon as they come in.
The cost of the party varies depending on the total number of attendees. The cost is $50 per person for 1 though 50 attendees. Cost drops to $45 per person if more than 50 attend. When the employees respond, you want to add their names to the list, indicate whether they will attend, and indicate whether they will bring a guest. Respond fully to the following questions regarding this task:
A - (TCO 1) Explain how you will structure your worksheet, including the titles, column headings, the formulas to calculate the cost for each employee (which may include the cost for a guest, and to calculate the total cost for the party). The company wants to record the names of the guests so that name tags can be made.
B - TCO 2) The facility where the party is to be held will provide one free parking pass to each employee. They will provide each attendee (employee or guest) a complimentary beverage if the total number of attendees exceeds 75. Describe how you will set up your worksheet to automatically provide the numbers for parking passes and for drinks as the responses are entered.
C - (TCO 4) You want the employees who are not going to attend to show on the list with a blue background. Explain the method you would use to have this automatically occur when you indicate the employee's response.
D - (TCO 4) The party is by invitation only, and the hotel is going to provide a doorperson to check those who reserved a spot as they come through the entrance. You need to generate the list of attendees from your worksheet. Explain how you will do this.
4. Fact Pattern: Question 4:
You've just joined the staff of the XYZ Manufacturing Company (XYZ, for short). XYZ manufactures only one product-the gizmo. It comes in two sizes, the mini-gizmo and the magna-gizmo. Both are difficult to manufacture, and consequently, the company closely monitors rejected units. The company has three locations, each of which produces both the mini and the magna-gizmos. You are automating the weekly production reports so that you can easily calculate total production for the entire company each week.
The mini-gizmo is priced at $3.25 per unit. The magna-gizmo is priced at $7.00 per unit. The unit cost for a reject mini-gizmo is $1.75. The cost for a reject magna-gizmo is $3.50. Respond fully to the following questions regarding this task:
A - (TCO 1) You have decided to develop a worksheet for each manufacturing facility manager to submit each week. It should show total production and revenue, and total scrap and cost for each product for the week. If the number of reject units for a product exceeds 10 percent of the production of that unit, the number of rejects should show in red font. Explain how you will set this up so that the managers enter only the number of units for each product's production and rejects.
B - (TCO 5) The managers will e-mail their weekly reports to you on Monday of the following week. You will then produce the summary report. Explain the process for doing this. Give a sample formula to total the number of mini-gizmos produced by the entire company in a week.
C - (TCO 5) Each week, you will present the combined report to your boss, who wants to see both the summary and the individual sheets for each location. You want to add a header with the date and your name to each page. What is the easiest way to do this? Explain the process.
D - (TCO 3) Describe the graph that you would create to accompany the report in Part C. Include formatting considerations to make important facts stand out.