Sunday, December 29, 2019

Harline Essay - 1963 Words

Wesley Rudolph September 16, 2012 History 104 Miracles at the Jesus Oak: Book Review Section one: Miracles at the Jesus Oak is the third of Harline’s contextual biographies. The others include, A bishop’s Tale: Mathias Hovius among His Flock in seventeenth –Century Flanders and Conversions: Two Family Stories From the Reformation and Modern America. His books were adopted by the Yale Printing Press and are used widely in many Universities all across the country. Many Religious groups have taken Harline’s scholarly works and used them as educational tools and belief strengtheners in the Church. Harline is now a history professor at Brigham Young University. Harline received inspiration for his historical texts from extensive†¦show more content†¦She had heard of his healing powers and was desperate for a miracle of her own. As she traveled to her destination she was side tracked by a woman on the street that told her â€Å"The blessings are now done here, in the tailor’s chapel† . This brought up the motifs of greed and as you read on you find out that the woman does this repeatedly. People in need will believe anything to help their situations and in this chapter you exactly see that. This also leads you to think that if these people were in fact healed at the tailor’s chapel could it all just be psychological? Could it just be in their heads? They believe so badly and put all of their faith in god to provide them with a miracle that they believe anything. They could just heal naturally on their own, but to them it is considered a miracle. This allows you to question the validity of all miracles. The fourth chapter tells the story of the communion thief. The main character in this story is a troubled ex prostitute who’s forced to live in a miserable house dealing with religious aspects she doesn’t agree with. She steals the holy host during sacrament and confides in her roommate who then rats her out. This causes a whirlwind of problem s for her. This story heavily looked at criminal behavior. The documents Harline read explained how she was tortured and interrogated to probe at her and figure out why she did what she did. The last chapter of the book ties all of the issues from the other chapter

Saturday, December 21, 2019

College Admissions Financial Planning - 1438 Words

Independent Life College Admissions: Financial Planning Financial stress is an everyday reality for college students. Dealing with the financial side of college has been proven to be one of the biggest stress factors for students. Before even starting college, one must worry about how they are going to pay for it; whether they ll take out student loans, apply for numerous scholarships, or pay out of pocket. There are many different ways you can prepare yourself for the financial strain of college, beginning when you are still in high school. Things such as consumer math classes, life application classes, and research of different budgets you will have to plan once you move out of the house are all things that can be huge†¦show more content†¦Once you leave high school, these things are usually thrown upon you quite quickly. There are many different financial struggles college kids go through, but there are also a lot of precautionary measures and budget strategies that help many college students get through their schooling with l ittle to no financial struggle. The first thing college students should consider when they move out of the house is how much money they actually spend on fast food and snacks that they do not need. Personally, spending money on food is one of my worst habits. If you added all of the money that people spent on fast food each month, there would be no reason for late bills and unpaid responsibilities. Impulse buying is also something that a lot of people struggle with. When you are first going to college, you should manage your funds as tightly as you can. Budgets should be small, and there should be no extra frivolous spending until after you have completed all of the spending that is one hundred and ten percent necessary for you to continue living comfortably. Another very important thing to look into as a college student is using rented textbooks, or finding used ones at a lower cost. Purchasing textbooks is one of the most important things at college, and just one more thing that students take for granted in publi c school. There are also simple things that you are taught throughout life, such as not going

Thursday, December 12, 2019

Relationship Between Activity Based Costing

Question: Discuss about the Relationship Between Activity Based Costing. Answer: Introduction Management accounting is a discipline of accounting that is primarily concerned with data gathering (from internal or external sources) analyzing, processing, and interpretation according to Tsai et al. (2011, p. 7275). The result is then communicated to the resulting information for use within the organization so that the management can plan more efficiently or even make decisions that will ensure efficient control operations that can meet the objectives of an organization (Podobedova 2014, p. 15). In this paper, a detailed examination and analysis of different approaches used in cost accounting are presented with Genre Company as the case study for the research. The paper mainly focuses on the traditional product costing also referred to as traditional costing as well as the Activity Based Costing (ABC).These two methods are essential in providing solutions which can be used by the CEO of Genre Company to make pricing decisions for its advanced product services. The paper as well d efines some of the key concepts that will be used in the calculation and analysis in the report. Definition of key concepts Different key concepts are essential in the accounting process while analyzing the case study. These include; Cost Unit refers to a unit of product or service about which costs are ascertained. The chosen unit is what is most relevant for the activities of the company. Direct costs, they comprise of direct materials, direct labor and direct expenses, are those which can be identified directly with a job, product or a service (Tan Ferreira, 2012, p. 408). (Direct materials + Direct labor+ direct expenses =prime cost). The indirect cost refers to all material, labor, and expense expenditure which cannot be identified with the product; while the total of indirect costs is known as overhead (Phan, Baird, Blair 2014, p.789). Cost center refers to a production or service location, function, activity or item of equipment for which costs are accumulated. Cost allocations are assigning a full item of value or revenue to a single charge unit, cost center, account, or period (Zang 2012). Short term variable costs are costs that do not vary with production volume. They change in direct relationship to the product size. Long - term variable costs, are costs which do not vary with the amount of production but vary with other measures of activity, but not immediately such as the setup costs as denoted by Tan and Ferreira (2012, p. 408). Fixed costs are classified as costs which do not vary, for a given period with any activity indicator. Solution a: Traditional overhead costing The traditional overhead costing will help us analyzes the predetermined overhead rate, product cost per unit for both Basic and Advanced products and the price that would be charged for the products according to Feng and Ho (2016). The conventional product costing which absorbs support overhead costs simply on production volume tends to over cost high volume products, which cause relatively little diversity, and under cost, low volume products, which produce a greater variety and so calls more upon the support services. Calculations of total machine hours in the period Product momentsunits producedtotal machine hours Basic 2hrs 2000 (22000) = 4000hrs Advanced 3hrs 10000 (310000) = 30000hrs 34000hrs. These are the total machine hours used in the determination of overhead rates under the traditional product costing. To determine the predetermined overhead rate then; OAR based on machine hours = 1632000(total manufacturing overhead budget)/34000 (total machine hours). =163200034000 =$ 48 per machine hours. Solution b: Cost summary using (traditional) costing. Basic advanced total $ $ $ Direct materials 80,000 600,000 Direct labor 60000 450000 Prime cost 140,000 1,050,000 1,190,000 Overheads @ 48 per Machine hours 192,0001,440,0001,632,000 Total Cost 332,000 2,490,000 2,822,000 Units produced 2,00010,000 Cost per unit$166$249 It thus means that the product cost per unit for the Basic product is $166 while that of the Advanced product is $249. Direct materials, (direct material production units), for basic= 402000 =80,000 Advanced, 6010000=600,000 Direct labor, (direct labor hours direct labor cost units produced), for Basic, (2152000) =60,000, advanced; (31510000) =450,000 Overheads @ 48 per machine hours, for basic (484000) = 192,000, advanced(4830000)= 1,440,000. Solution c: Advanced price The price charged for the Basic and Advanced products under the traditional costing is 120 percent of the manufacturing cost, therefore; For basic, price = (120100) 166 =$199 (rounded). Advanced, price= (120100) 249=$299 (rounded). Activity Based Accounting In using the Activity based costing, we need to identify the main activities in the company, the cost drivers which refer to the factors which determine the value of the activity. And also examine the costs of each activity also known as the cost pools and finally charge the support overheads to products by their usage of the activity, expressed regarding the chosen cost driver. ABC method uses many drivers as absorption bases. Therefore ABC cost driver produces more realistic product costs, particularly when support overheads are high. In this case, our cost pool and cost drivers are outlined as below; Activity cost pool (ACP) Cost driver(CD)Budgeted amount of Cost driver Set up costs(SP) Number of production runs 80 Engineering costs Engineering changes 200 design changes Machine related expenses machine hours 18000 hours Plant-associated costs Floor space in sq.ft 3840 sq.ft. Focusing on the drivers who cause overheads and tracing costs to products on the usage of cost drivers enables a higher proportion of expenses to product related. When using traditional systems, most support costs cannot be linked to products except in the most arbitrary way. It is this feature of ABC which, it is claimed, produces greater realism. It will be seen that ABC charges more overheads to lower volume production and tends to cost relatively less to higher volume production. From the calculations above, it is clear that the Basic product has been undercharged while the advanced product has been overcharged. It thus means that the CEO of the Genre Company can price the superior product at $226 which will ease competition from the new competitor entering the market. Solution g: Benefits of using Activity Based Costing System and its usefulness in costing the current products According to Matherly and Burney (2013), the implementation of an ABC can be very expensive for an organization and time consuming as well. The entire process can as well require valuable resources as it involves data collection, measurement, and entry into a new system. In such a point, small businesses may need the assistance of a specialist who has a proper understanding in setting up the ABC system. Data can as well be misinterpreted since reports like the profit margin can vary from the traditional reporting methods and others. However, despite the challenges, activity based accounting improves the performance of the business in many different ways according to Martin-Diener et al. (2016, p. 1050). These include; ABC recognizes that it is activities which cause loss, not products and it is products which consume events. It also focuses attention on the real nature of cost behavior, and it helps in reducing costs and identifies activities which do not add value to the product. ABC recognizes the diversity and complexity of current production by the use of some cost drivers(CD), many of which are transaction based rather than based solely on production volume (Karagiorgos 2016, p. 67). It provides a reliable indication of long-run variable product cost which is relevant to strategic decision making. The method is flexible enough to trace costs to processes, customers, areas of managerial responsibility, as well as product costs. It also provides useful financial measures such as the cost driver rates and non -financial measures such as the transaction volumes. Its principle of using activities to trace costs can be applied across a range of service industries as well as manufacturing firms. More losses can be attributed to the product. In modern factories, there are a growing number of non - factory floor activities. Activity-based costing (ABC) is concerned with all activities so takes product costing beyond the traditional factory floor basis. ABC seeks not only to attribute overheads to product costs on a more realistic basis than simply production volume but also attempts to show the relationship between overhead costs and the activities that cause them. ABC is equally applicable to service organizations and activity- based analysis can be used in budgeting. Conclusion Activity Based Accounting is a strategy of allocating costs with the base on some resources a service per product consumers. Using ABC is mainly essential to business operations that open away for a customized services or products. The report above shows evident that the activity-based costing (ABC); is a more realistic and reliable method of costing products. It is clear that unlike the traditional product costing, activity based costing is more sensible pricing decision. It also does not over cost or under cost the product because it employs the use of more cost driving tools, unlike traditional method which only uses either machine hours or direct labor to make its pricing decisions. List of references Elhamma, 2015, 'The Relationship between Activity Based Costing, Perceived Environmental Uncertainty, and Global Performance,' International Journal Of Management, Accounting Economics, 2, 1, pp. 73-90, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 19 January 2017. Feng, S, Ho, C 2016, 'The real options approach to adoption or discontinuation of a management accounting innovation: the case of activity-based costing,' Review Of Quantitative Finance Accounting, 47, 3, pp. 835-856, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 19 January 2017. Hughes, M 2016, 'The Simple Analytics of Matrix Accounting, Activity-Based Costing, and Linear Programming,' Journal Of Corporate Accounting Finance (Wiley), 27, 3, pp. 31-37, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 19 January 2017. Karagiorgos, T 2016, 'The interaction effect of accounting information systems, user satisfaction, and Activity-Based Costing. Use on hotel financial performance: Evidence from Greece', Accounting Management Information Systems / Contabilitate Si Informatica De Gestiune, 15, 4, pp. 757-784, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 19 January 2017. Marais, M 2011, 'A Field Study on the Limitations of Activity-Based Costing When Resources are Provided on a Joint and Indivisible Basis,' Journal Of Accounting Research, 36, 1, pp. 129-142, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 19 January 2017. Martin-Diener, S, Mohler-Kuo,( E) Foster M, Martin, B 2016.'Physical Activity, Sensation Seeking, and Aggression as Injury Risk Factors in Young Swiss Men. A Population-Based Cohort Study', Journal Of Physical Activity Health, 13, 10, pp. 1049-1055, SPORTDiscus with Full Text, EBSCOhost, viewed 19 January 2017. Matherly, M, Burney, L 2013, 'Active Learning Activities to Revitalize Managerial Accounting Principles,' Issues In Accounting Education, 28, 3, pp. 653-680, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 19 January 2017. Park, J, Simpson, T 2011, 'Toward an activity-based costing system for product families and product platforms in the early stages of development,' International Journal Of Production Research, 46, 1, pp. 99-130, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 19 January 2017. Phan, T, Baird, K, Blair, B 2014, 'The use and success of activity-based management practices at different organizational life cycle stages,' International Journal Of Production Research, 52, 3, pp. 787-803, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 19 January 2017. Podobedova, N 2014, 'Activity-based costing in management accounting of an economic entity,' International Accounting, 45, pp. 14-24, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 19 January 2017. Tan, A, Ferreira, 2012, 'The Effects of the Use of Activity-Based Costing Software in the Learning Process: An Empirical Analysis,' Accounting Education, 21, 4, pp. 407-429, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 19 January 2017. Tsai, W, Chen, Liu H, J, Chen, (S) Shen, Y 2011, 'Using activity-based costing(ABC) to examine capital investments for green manufacturing systems. International Journal Of Production Research (IJPR), 49, 24, pp. 7275-7292, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 19 January 2017. Zang, AY 2012, 'Evidence on the Trade-Off between Real Activities Manipulation and Accrual-Based Earnings Management,' Accounting Review, 87, 2, pp. 675-703, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 19 January 2017.

Thursday, December 5, 2019

Landscape IT Security And Technology †Free Samples For Students

Question: Discuss About The Landscape IT Security And Technology? Answer: Introducation IT security or data security is a major concern in every industry and organization. The data associated with the organization is needed to be protected in order to prevent the origin of information security threat associated with a system. Information technology security or IT security is a process of implementing different measures to protect and safeguard the information associated with the system. Information security management is a procedure of managing an organizations confidential data. IT security management is necessary to manage the risks systematically (Von Solms Van Niekerk, 2013). Information Technology enables a set of strategies used for managing the tools and procedures necessary to detect and prevent the threats associated with the system. In order to manage and protect the business processes and confidentiality of the data, proper information security is necessary. Confidential information associated with a system can be vulnerable to a number of attacks. These attacks include virus and malware attacks apart from hacking, spoofing phishing and so on. In an organization, information technology devices includes, computer and associated devices, servers, routers and switches that manages all the data and information associated with an organization. Information technology security deals with managing and controlling these sensitive data to prevent illegitimate or unauthorized uses. There are a number of ways of maintaining the data security in an organization (Peltier, 2013). Certain organization uses protected network or intranet to share their resources amo ng all the employees of the organization in a secure manner. This ensures that the data is not hacked or misused while transfer and also prevent the unauthorized access. Information Technology management is a complex task, as there is no place for mistake. This is particularly because it is not always possible for the organization or its employees to circulate data only in the organization premises. Features such as data access from remote location, which is a necessity in todays business in prone to attacks as well. Hence, data or information security needs to be properly maintained in an organization. Technology landscape refers to the different things associated with different business. It provides a one to one solution related to any IP goal and is a category of assessments that results in different outcomes depending on the strategy and context the business organization is following. Technological landscape associated with a business is an intellectual property of business intelligence that might be sometimes difficult to understand (CeArley Claunch, 2012). IT Security Models and access controls Security policies associated with an organization deals with the process by which the data of a particular organization is accessed and the level of security required to protect a particular data associated with a system. The security models associated with an organization outlines the process by which the security measures are to be implemented. It also explains the process by which the data can be accessed the actions to be taken to maintain the confidentiality of the data. Security models support the security policies implemented in an organization (Zissis Lekkas, 2012). If the policy requires all the employees to register before providing access to certain system, security models ensures the process by which this authentication can be achieved. Security mainly deals with the availability, integrity and confidentiality of the data. Security models thus play an important role in managing the security essentials associated with an organization. Proper security models are essential to ensure that the confidentially, availability and the integrity of the data is properly maintained in an organization. Access control in the information security system can be defined as the selective restriction of unauthorized user from accessing the system and resources. Access control limits the availability of information only to the specified person and prevents access for the unauthorized users. Access control is enforced in order to protect the confidential data of a system from illegal use. This adds to an additional layer of protection to the data associated with an organization. Moreover, it limits the access to the physical and virtual resources of an organization thus protecting it from theft and misuse (Lin et al., 2012). Access control is generally ensured by protecting a system or resource of virtual information with the help of user id and password. Only the authorized user has knowledge about these two credentials and thus can be accessed only by them. Access control systems forces the users to provide required credentials before the grant of access. The type of credential might be different for accessing the physical resources. Access control of physical resources may include CCTV surveillance, restricted areas and data entry before the access, finger print protection, use of card or key and so on. Access control can be classified into two major types, physical and logical. Physical access control protects the physical resources of an organization such as IT assets, components and so on. Logical physical control deals with protection of certain resources of an organization, which includes, the network connections, data resources, systems files and data (Almutairi et al., 2012). IT security Threat and Risk Assessment Information Security threat can be defined as a possible danger associated with the vulnerability and the data security breach that is capable of causing certain harm to the system. The common information security threats include Denial of service attack, hacking, phishing, ransom ware attack, Spam, Pharming, spoofing and so on. These threats are capable of causing serious harms to the computer system. Threats are an outcome of the different types of attack a computer or Information security system might face or is exposed to. The attack in and information security system can be broadly classifies into active attack and passive attack. An active attack is more dangerous than passive attack as it mainly deals with the data breach and serious loss of information. Passive attack is however, less severe which involves no direct attack but the attacker keeps a track of the system to collect necessary information required to plan and execute an active attack. In passive attack, the system is monitored and thoroughly scanned in order to identify the vulnerabilities of a system. The purpose of passive attack is to gain information of a targeted attack (Crossler et al., 2013). Information Technology risk assessment is a process of identifying and analyzing the risk associated with a system. It is a structured document that reviews the threat associated with a system and differentiate it according to their likelihood of occurrence and then multiplied with their affect on the operation or impact. There are a number of processes associated with the risk management, which includes, identifying the hazards and evaluating the risks associated with the system and records the result in a proper document (Alhawari et al., 2012). This document is updated with the addition or deletion of the associated risks in an organization. This is an effective method of preventing the security problems. Risk assessment according to their priority of occurrence is an integral part of the risk management process. The information security risks deals with the data protection against all the vulnerabilities a system is exposed to. Risk assessment document is maintained in order to t rack, monitor and control the overall risks associated with the information system of the organization. References Alhawari, S., Karadsheh, L., Talet, A. N., Mansour, E. (2012). Knowledge-based risk management framework for information technology project. International Journal of Information Management, 32(1), 50-65. Almutairi, A., Sarfraz, M., Basalamah, S., Aref, W., Ghafoor, A. (2012). A distributed access control architecture for cloud computing. IEEE software, 29(2), 36-44. CeArley, D., Claunch, C. (2012). The top 10 strategic technology trends for 2013. The Top, 10. Crossler, R. E., Johnston, A. C., Lowry, P. B., Hu, Q., Warkentin, M., Baskerville, R. (2013). Future directions for behavioral information security research. computers security, 32, 90-101. Lin, G. Y., He, S., Huang, H., Wu, J. Y., Chen, W. (2012). Access control security model based on behavior in cloud computing environment. Journal of China Institute of Communications, 33(3), 59-66. Peltier, T. R. (2013). Information security fundamentals. CRC Press. Von Solms, R., Van Niekerk, J. (2013). From information security to cyber security. computers security, 38, 97-102. Zissis, D., Lekkas, D. (2012). Addressing cloud computing security issues. Future Generation computer systems, 28(3), 583-592.