Assignment #2


Income: Systems and Controls





CASE A: You are the business manager of the not-for-profit Symphony Orchestra Foundation of Anyplace, USA, which has just approved the final draft of an extensive development campaign which you are certain will produce a huge volume of mail contributions -- a high proportion of which you believe will come in the form of actual cash, although these will, no doubt, be in the smaller donations. What steps should you take to insure that all the cash contributions that arrived in the mail will be turned over to the Foundation?

CASE B: You are the Impressario (Organizer-Producer) of a one-shot Rock Music Festival for which you have signed up some famous groups, prepared an ad campaign, printed tickets, hired staff, arranged additional security with the local police, signed a lease for one night use of the local football stadium complete with box office and staff, ushers, cleaners, snack bars, etc. The stadium has 70,000 seats. Your lease provides that you may keep any fees charged for parking cars in the huge open neighboring lot. What steps can you take to insure that the parking attendants that you employ will turn over to you $4.00 for every car that parked?

CASE C: Assume that you own an opera house where you present over 300 various performing arts events each year. You charge patrons $1 per car to park in your own small parking lot. What steps will you take to handle parking receipts and how will they differ from CASE B, above?

CASE D: DESIGN and COMPLETE (preferably on a computer spreadsheet) a Box Office Statement (performance report) for the Rock Music Festival of March 18, 1990 (see CASE B above) held in the 70,000 seat Stadium. The 70,000 seats are divided into the following price categories:
Center (yellow tix): 20,000 seats - 20,000 tickets printed @ $30.00
Lower Side (red): 15,000 seats - 15,000 tickets printed @ $20.00
Upper Side (green): 15,000 seats - 15,000 tickets printed @ $15.00
End Section (brown): 20,000 seats - 20,000 tickets printed @ $12.50


An additional 25,000 white Rush Seats Tickets have been printed with a $7.50 price. Rush seats are not put on sale until 2 hours before performance. They contain a blank space for the insertion of the seat location (assigned and filled in at point of sale), based on the unsold deadwood of other price seats. The other colors contain a seat location and price printed on their face. Deadwood count taken after the start of the performance was:
Yellow 1,000
Red 1,350
Green 0
Brown 6,900
White 15,000
Discounted seats were sold as follows: 250 yellow tickets were given out as complimentary tickets (comps) to press, VIPs, employees, etc.

Credit Card Sales (mostly, but not all, by phone order) were made subject to a commission (called by the Credit Card Companies, a "discount") as follows: No record was kept of the price scales at which these tickets were sold on credit cards.

The stadium turned over locked boxes containing the following count of torn ticket stubs:
Yellows (comps) 172
Yellows (paid) 17,000
Reds 13,400
Greens 14,900
Browns 13,000
Whites 10,000
Note: The comps were all actual printed tickets which had been punched with a distinctive hole punch.

Weather was cold, but clear, fortunately, as otherwise the Festival would have had to be held over to the following night -- and if there were two consecutive nights of rain, etc., the Festival would have been cancelled, with a consequent great loss to the Producers.

A local record club, in accordance with its contract, earned a 12 1/2% commission on the following sales of tickets to the Festival: 3,000 yellows, 4,000 reds, 4,500 greens, and 6,250 browns. All sold by Record Club were at full price.

Make sure that your Box Office statement is created and prepared in a way that provides maximum information clearly, so that someone from outside could ask a question about any category of information and get the answer easily from looking at the form. (ie, "How much ticket income was generated from yellow tickets? or "How many people purchased brown tickets at full price?", etc.)

CASE E: Referring to CASE D, (1) How many patrons who received admission tickets to the performance failed to attend it, assuming all torn ticket stubs represented everyone who attended that night? (2) Could any have attended, for whom NO torn ticket stub was produced? (by the attendants at the gate) Explain how this could occur.

CASE F: Referring to CASE D, (a) The concert was "sold out" -- standing room only (SRO) 15 minutes before the first act opened the show. Compute the number of tickets sold for "standing room."

CASE G: Referring to CASE D, shortly after the concert starts, you notice that nobody is standing despite the fact that you have sold SRO tickets -- everyone has seats. How is this possible? Point out the figures on the Box Office statement that would tell you this is true even if you hadn't looked.



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