Garrison Boutique, a small novelty store, just spent $4,000 on a new software program that will help in organizing its inventory. Due to the steep learning curve required to use the new software, Garrison must decide between hiring two part-time college students or one full-time employee. Each college student would work 20 hours per week, and would earn $1 S per hour. The full-time employee would work 40 hours per week and would earn $15 per hour plus the equivalent of $2 per hour in benefits. Employees are given two polo shirts to wear as their uniform. The polo-shirts cost Garrison $10 each. What are the relevant costs, relevant revenues, sunk costs, and opportunity costs for Garrison?

Now assume that it is several years later. The brothers are concerned about the firm’s current credit terms of net 30, which means that contractors buying building products from the firm are not offered a discount and are supposed to pay the full amount in 30 days. Gross sales are now running $1,000,000 a year, and 80% (by dollar volume) of the firm’s paying customers generally pay the full amount on Day 30; the other 20% pay, on average, on Day 40. Of the firm’s gross sales, 2% ends up as bad-debt losses. The brothers are now considering a change in the firm’s credit policy. The change would entail: (1) changing the credit terms to 2/10, net 20, (2) employing stricter credit standards before granting credit, and (3) enforcing collections with greater vigor than in the past. Thus, cash customers and those paying within 10 days would receive a 2% discount, but all others would have to pay the full amount after only 20 days. The brothers believe the discount would both attract additional customers and encourage some existing customers to purchase more from the firm—after all, the discount amounts to a price reduction. Of course, these customers would take the discount and hence would pay in only 10 days. The net expected result is for sales to increase to $1,100,000; for 60% of the paying customers to take the discount and pay on the 10th day; for 30% to pay the full amount on Day 20; for 10% to pay late on Day 30; and for bad-debt losses to fall from 2% to 1% of gross sales. The firm’s operating cost ratio will remain unchanged at 75%, and its cost of carrying receivables will remain unchanged at 12%. To begin the analysis, describe the four variables that make up a firm’s credit policy and explain how each of them affects sales and collections.

To generate leads for new business, Gustin Investment Services offers free financial planning seminars at major hotels in Southwest Florida. Gustin conducts seminars for groups of 25 individuals. Each seminar costs Gustin $3000, and the average first-year commission for each new account opened is $4600. Gustin estimates that for each individual attending the seminar, there is a 0.01 probability that he/she will open a new account.   Determine the equation for computing Gustin’s profit per seminar, given values of the relevant parameters. Round your answers to the nearest dollar.Profit = (New Accounts Opened × $  fill in the blank 1) – $  fill in the blank 2 What type of random variable is the number of new accounts opened? (Hint: Review Appendix 16.1 for descriptions of various types of probability distributions.)The number of new accounts opened is a     random variable with fill in the blank 4 trials and fill in the blank 5 probability of a success on a single trial. Assume that the…