BKAM3023 MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING II

A192 SECOND SEMESTER FEBRUARY

2019/2020

Service Learning: A Small Business Project

Project Guidelines

The Project
Students will be divided into groups of five. Each group has to identify and select a small
business/industry within 40 km radius from the campus. The identified business will be the case
for the project. Selection must receive consent from the respective lecturer of your lecture group.

The Expected Outputs

Your group is expected to do the following:

1. Project 1: Business Plan (before the field work) – 10%

 Rubric type: M&E (10%)
 Group Project: Marked individually (10%)
 Submission date: 09 March 2020, Monday

2. Project 2: Written Project Report (based on the performed field work) – 20%
 Rubric types: CTPS (10%) and SR (10%)
 Group Project:
- Marked by group (based on the report) – CTPS rubric (10%); and,
- Marked individually (peer review & lecturer’s view) – SR rubric (10%)
 Submission date: 04 May 2020, Monday

PROJECT 1: The Business Plan

Students will be divided into groups of five. Each group has to identify and select a small
business/industry – inside or outside campus to become supplier. The identified business will be
the case for the project. The purpose is for you to do a planning based on research on the type of
business you have selected. Selection must receive consent from the respective lecturer of your
lecture group. FIRST COME FIRST SERVE BASIS. Clash/redundant supplier/product type are
not accepted.

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Task:
i. Identify product to sell.
ii. Select real supplier who will supply the product to your group to sell, and
iii. Try to get as much information as possible, for example, the possible customers,
competition level, mode of transactions (cash/credit) among other things.

Based on the above information do some SWOT analysis to help you to do a plan for the selected
business. Your group will need to identify ways to market at least ONE of the core products, set
sales target, and develop related operating and financial budgets (e.g. sales budget, cash budget)
which you have learned in second topic. When preparing for the sales target you need to think of
assumptions that you make regarding the demand of the product(s). This should be clearly stated
in the proposal. You may want to apply the CVP knowledge from the first topic that you learn in
your business plan. Use EXCEL spreadsheet to help you to do the above budgets. The outline for
the business plan follows:

1. Executive summary
a. Objective of the business plan
b. Company/Business values

2. Business summary
a. Purpose of the business
b. Management team
c. Vision and Mission

3. SWOT analysis

4. Market analysis
a. Market segementation
b. Market needs

5. Strategy and implementation summary

a. Marketing strategy
b. Sales forecast and strategy

6. CVP analysis / Breakeven analysis

7. Budget analysis
a. Operating budget
b. Financial budget

8. Financial plan (using excell worksheet)

a. Projected profit and loss
b. Projected cash flow
c. Projected balance sheet

9. Business Ratios

Project 1 due date: 9 March 2020, Monday

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PROJECT 2: Written Project Report

This written report is based on the field work done as proposed in Project 1 (the business plan).
Project 2 is a real business operation to measure community service learning. Hence, based on
the business plan proposal in Project 1, each group are required to have the following sections in
their written report:

A. Introduction
Describe the purpose of the report. Briefly state some of the important findings of your
business – success or failure – achieve target or not etc. Describe the value of your company.
Finally, describe how the remaining sections of the report are organized.

B. Background of the case (your business)

Describe some characteristics of the business and the extent of its competitive/social nature
(the importance of the business to the owner/team). It is important that you collect the
relevant data during your visits and interactions with the supplier and other related parties.
What some of the important ‘rules of the game’ for a successful business of that nature. (If
possible – show the evidence of your meeting with the supplier; e.g. photo etc.)

C. Operating Issues and Solution(s) - real situation facing

This section discusses some of the important issues and how they are addressed. You need to
organize into common issues and discuss the solutions you took to resolve the problems. For
example, when implementing the business plan what difficulty you have encountered; what
went wrong with the assumption(s) made about the sales target; what are the ways (different
from the plan) to make the product(s) attractive to potential customers to meet the sales
target. This section might consider applying flexible budget.

We would expect some differences exist between the original plan and what you have done
– changes, adjustments, new information/knowledge which you did not consider during the
pre-field work (business plan) stage. Discuss them here in the section. This section might
consider applying standard costing and variance analysis.

A simple analysis that shows budgeted and actual figures and the related variances can
enrich the section. For example, standard costing (learned in Topic 3) can be used, if
applicable, to analyze the performance.

D. Reflection

The periodic reflections that you made (e.g. Weekly or fortnightly) among team members
and/or the respective lecturers can be important sources to help you write in this section.
You may want to monitor/evaluate the team performance in implementing the business plan
and thus achieve the target sales and profit.

Basically for this section – shows the thinking how do you reflect on the situation. For
example; if you/group is facing problems with the market target, what the solution that
you/group do to solve the problem. If your business experience loss or gain profit, what
you/group do to react to the situation. (Show the evidence – e.g. photo /video, etc.).
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E. Conclusion
Summarize the report in a couple of sentences. Tie back all the arguments (especially from
sections C) and D) in a nicely written conclusion.

F. Appendices
Some of the supporting analysis and documents may be included in here.

G. References
Please write the references using APA format (http://www.apa.org).

Project 2 due date: 04 May 2020, Monday

IMPORTANT NOTE:

1. Format of Project 1 and Project 2:

 Times New Roman (font 12), single spacing.
 Length: No minimum and maximum words length for both Project 1 and 2.

2. Each group are required to prepare the LOG BOOK in order to record all activities done
by the group members regarding to both projects, for example: the group meeting held,
interview session with the supplier, consulations with the lecturers regarding to the
projects etc. Each recorded activities must be explained IN DETAIL in the log book, for
example: time, venue and date of the meeting, signature of those who attended the
meeting, agenda of the meeting, explanation of each meeting agenda etc. This log book
WILL BE MARKED by the respective lecturer.

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