Hannaford’s General Store Ltd. (HGL) is a small, family-owned hardwarde store in Winnipeg, Manitoba. It has a small customer base that tends to place regular orders. You, CPA, have just been assigned as the audit senior on the inaugural HGL audit for the period ended December 31, 2018. Previously, HGL had reviews completed by your firm. As senior, you will be responsible for dealing with accounts where professional judgment is required, including accounts that require management estimation. The first account you are to analyze is the allowance for doubtful accounts. HGL has provided you with an electronic copy of its account receivable log for the past two years to help you determine if the allowance for doubtful accounts is appropriate. HGL’s policy is to record an allowance equal to 3% of outstanding receivable balances at year end. At December 31, 2018, HGL has recorded an allowance of $1,040.
The dataset provided contained the following fields:
CustomerID Unique identifier for each customer
InvoiceNumber Invoice number for sales made on credit
InvoiceDate Date of credit sale
DueDate 30 days after the invoice date
YearEndDate December 31, 2018
InvoiceAmount Invoice amount (in Canadian dollars)
PaymentDate Date invoice was paid
PaymentAmount Amount paid
Outstanding InvoiceAmount less PaymentAmount
DaysToSettle Days elapsed between InvoiceDate and PaymentDate
DaysLate Days elapsed between DueDate and PaymentDate (or YearEndDate if payment not received)
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Task #1
Sales analysis
To begin your analysis of the allowance for doubtful accounts, it’s important to get a good understanding of HGL’s operations, including the magnitude of sales made on credit over the past two years and whether sales on credit are increasing or decreasing.
i. Create a card visualization for total sales.
ii. Create a stacked column visualization for total sales by year.
iii. Create a card visualization for number of customers.
iv. Create a table displaying total sales by customer, followed by a cluster bar chart displaying each customer’s sales as a percentage of the total.
v. Create a table displaying total sales by customer for 2017 and 2018.
vi. Create a card visualization for the number of invoices outstanding at year end.
vii. Create a card visualization for the dollar value of the invoices outstanding at year end.
Submit your response to each using screenshots from Power BI and by following the steps outlined in Appendix I.
Task #2
Customer analysis
One of the key concerns when evaluating the allowance for doubtful accounts is a customer’s payment history. HGL’s accounting system tracked both the number of days taken to settle an invoice (DaysToSettle) and the number of days that the payment was late (DaysLate).
As items sold in the last 30 days of the fiscal year are not “due” until the new year, it is reasonable to exclude these current items from our analysis of old invoices.
i. Create a table displaying all of the outstanding invoices at year end.
ii. Create a table displaying all “late” outstanding invoices at year end.
iii. Create a table that displays customers who regularly pay more than 180 days late.
Submit your response to each using screenshots from Power BI and by following the steps outlined in Appendix II.
Task #3
Prepare a memo to the audit partner on the appropriateness of the allowance for doubtful accounts using the information you have gathered above. The partner may wish to discuss the allowance with HGL’s management, so be as specific as possible with your examples and state any assumptions you have made in your analysis.
