Given the glitches Rita had found in the spreadsheet, she’d decided to introduce some controls to stop her from making mistakes when keying the orders from her socials into the spreadsheet. The first was a “note to self”, where she told herself to read the order in full in the message to make sure it was an order she could accept (i.e., the customer ordered a type of muffin she produced, and included the right contact details and payment method). If any of these criteria were not met or she couldn’t fulfil the order for other reasons, she replied to the customer for additional clarifying information before she entered the order into her spreadsheet.She also asked James to add some controls to the spreadsheet (he was being ultra-nice to Rita as there’d been another delay in delivering the database solution). These controls included field check on the date and time format, an additional check to make sure an email address was entered and it contained an “@” character, a check to make sure the address wasn’t blank and that she’d split the Order column into two columns: one to select the item from a drop-down list and the second, a quantity column, to enter a valid whole number between 1 and 6 (dozen). Using this last decision (to split the order column), James also added a running sum column of the total number of muffins ordered to date. The cell background turned red when the running sum was more than 12 dozen. This was helpful as Rita could only bake 12 dozen per day. Finally, James provided a summary report indicating how many of each type of muffin she needed to bake each day as well as a count of the number of orders and the total number of muffins to bake. Figure 1 provides some examples.  Flag question: Question 1Question 11 ptsDescribe the design classification for Rita’s “Note to Self” control. i.e. describe its intent, frequency and operation.View keyboard shortcutsEditViewInsertFormatToolsTable

Rita was lying awake at night. The words of one of her friends, who’d been at Rita’s apartment for afternoon tea, were ringing in her ears: “These muffins are so good. You should think about selling them!”  The following morning, Rita posted an ad on her local Facebook group and waited for the orders to come in. By the end of the week, words were getting around. Friends would message her on all Rita’s different socials with orders, some would stop her in the street, and even people she’d never met would overhear her talking on the bus and ask her to take an order. Unfortunately, she was losing track of what to deliver to who. She’d been baking almost non-stop, and when she wasn’t baking, she was at the supermarket buying ingredients. The problem was that she had no idea whether she was making any money.

The spreadsheet that James had developed for Rita was certainly helping. However, Rita had noticed a few “glitches”. The effect of these glitches had really come to light this week. Rita’s business was growing, and it was time for her to open a business bank account. The bank asked her a lot of questions about her business that she wasn’t too sure about. For example, she wasn’t sure what to enter when the bank asked her for revenue projections. The office where she worked had asked her to provide 1 dozen blueberry muffins a day for the next two months. However, she couldn’t recall the expected revenue from this order; she hadn’t bothered entering this into James’ spreadsheet as she’d made a note of it on her phone (and since she woke up late today and had to rush making that order before going to the bank, she has forgotten to bring her phone for her appointment in the bank!)    Further, the bank had asked about her balance sheet. She hadn’t thought about this. She’d borrowed a KitchenAid mixer from her best friend Daisy but wasn’t sure whether this was a gift, or she’d have to give it back. The oven was in the share house she lived in, should that be considered hers? Also, in between saving her muffins from burning and running to the store to get that extra block of butter, she didn’t have time to do a stock take. Most of the ingredients were in the pantry at her share house, and she had noticed that some had gone missing when they had a housewarming party, along with some of her baking utensils. She’d also bought frozen blueberries and raspberries in bulk and kept them in her parent’s freezer. She wasn’t sure how many of them there were left as she’d said it was OK for her parents to take some when they needed them.Review the sample for Rita’s orders spreadsheet that James had developed:

Rita’s hiring! With her business really starting to take off, Rita realised she could no longer do everything herself and had recently hired a social media and sales analyst (Peggy), a pastry chef (Florence) and a sous chef (Marco), as well as a bookkeeper (Glenn).  It wasn’t long before Rita realised that managing staff wasn’t as easy as she thought it was going to be. Peggy was concerned that her performance goals were very vague and that the goalposts seemed to be continuously moving, making it almost impossible for her to track her progress. Her main job was to manage Rita’s Muffins' social media accounts (mainly Instagram and Facebook) and to drive sales.  There was some dispute about whether her target should be measured by “followed” links to Rita’s Muffins landing page or actual sales generated from a “followed” link. So the precise calculation hadn’t been locked down. Also, every time the business beat target, the targets would be increased, which Peggy didn’t think was very fair. They also seemed ridiculously ambitious, or in her words, “totally unachievable.” Glenn’s previous role was with a large corporate where the financial cycles were, by and large, automated. It was quite a shock coming to such a manual operation as Rita’s Muffins. He passed his bookkeeping exams in the 1980s, so he could remember very little about how to set up payroll from scratch. The result was that Peggy didn’t get paid, Florence got paid twice in the same cycle, and Marco was taxed at twice the normal rate. All three said they were going to quit if it wasn’t sorted by the next pay period.Despite these issues, Rita’s muffin baking business appears to be doing increasingly well. Every week, she’s baking at least 10% more muffins than the previous week. Therefore, she was somewhat shocked when her bookkeeper Glenn told her that if things didn’t improve quickly, they might not be able to make payroll next month. When she asked what was causing the cashflow squeeze, all Glenn was able to say was that the forecast gross profit margin was 67%, but they were only hitting 58%. He then shrugged his shoulders and said: “I’m not sure why, we costed the muffins accurately enough and then priced for a 67% gross profit margin.”Rita started by asking Florence and Marco what they thought the problem was. Florence reminded Rita that their policy was to only sell muffins baked within the last 24 hours and give any leftovers to the shelter. She also mentioned that they always seemed to send a lot of muffins to the local homeless shelter on Sundays and Mondays. Rita checked the production records, and they seemed to be baking the right amount on Sundays and Mondays. Further, the problem only seemed to have started when they changed from a “bake-to-order” system to a “bake-to-forecast” system.One other thing Rita noticed while checking the production records was that while the number of muffins baked on Sundays and Mondays matched the forecast, on Wednesdays and Thursdays, they seemed to be baking 20% more muffins than forecast. However, they were only donating a handful of muffins to the shelter.

Rita’s hiring! With her business really starting to take off, Rita realised she could no longer do everything herself and had recently hired a social media and sales analyst (Peggy), a pastry chef (Florence) and a sous chef (Marco), as well as a bookkeeper (Glenn).  It wasn’t long before Rita realised that managing staff wasn’t as easy as she thought it was going to be. Peggy was concerned that her performance goals were very vague and that the goalposts seemed to be continuously moving, making it almost impossible for her to track her progress. Her main job was to manage Rita’s Muffins' social media accounts (mainly Instagram and Facebook) and to drive sales.  There was some dispute about whether her target should be measured by “followed” links to Rita’s Muffins landing page or actual sales generated from a “followed” link. So the precise calculation hadn’t been locked down. Also, every time the business beat target, the targets would be increased, which Peggy didn’t think was very fair. They also seemed ridiculously ambitious, or in her words, “totally unachievable.” Glenn’s previous role was with a large corporate where the financial cycles were, by and large, automated. It was quite a shock coming to such a manual operation as Rita’s Muffins. He passed his bookkeeping exams in the 1980s, so he could remember very little about how to set up payroll from scratch. The result was that Peggy didn’t get paid, Florence got paid twice in the same cycle, and Marco was taxed at twice the normal rate. All three said they were going to quit if it wasn’t sorted by the next pay period.Despite these issues, Rita’s muffin baking business appears to be doing increasingly well. Every week, she’s baking at least 10% more muffins than the previous week. Therefore, she was somewhat shocked when her bookkeeper Glenn told her that if things didn’t improve quickly, they might not be able to make payroll next month. When she asked what was causing the cashflow squeeze, all Glenn was able to say was that the forecast gross profit margin was 67%, but they were only hitting 58%. He then shrugged his shoulders and said: “I’m not sure why, we costed the muffins accurately enough and then priced for a 67% gross profit margin.”Rita started by asking Florence and Marco what they thought the problem was. Florence reminded Rita that their policy was to only sell muffins baked within the last 24 hours and give any leftovers to the shelter. She also mentioned that they always seemed to send a lot of muffins to the local homeless shelter on Sundays and Mondays. Rita checked the production records, and they seemed to be baking the right amount on Sundays and Mondays. Further, the problem only seemed to have started when they changed from a “bake-to-order” system to a “bake-to-forecast” system.One other thing Rita noticed while checking the production records was that while the number of muffins baked on Sundays and Mondays matched the forecast, on Wednesdays and Thursdays, they seemed to be baking 20% more muffins than forecast. However, they were only donating a handful of muffins to the shelter. Flag question: Question 1Question 1Tips1 ptsHow could Rita have potentially avoided the staff threatening to quit?

How could Rita have potentially avoided the staff threatening to quit?