Mary Tappin, an assistant Vice President at Galaxy Toys, was disturbed to find on her desk a memo from her boss, Gary Resnick, to the controller of the company. The memo appears below:
GALAXY TOYS INTERNAL MEMO
Sept 15
To: Harry Wilson, Controller
Fm: Gary Resnick, Executive Vice President
As you know, we won't start recording many sales until October when stores start accepting shipments from us for the Christmas season. Meanwhile, we are producing flat-out and are building up our finished goods inventories so that we will be ready to ship next month.
Unfortunately, we are in a bind right now since it looks like the net income for the quarter ending on Sept 30 is going to be pretty awful. This may get us in trouble with the bank since they always review the quarterly financial reports and may call in our loan if they don't like what they see. Is there any possibility that we could change the classification of some of our period costs to product costs-such as the rent on the finished goods warehouse?
Please let me know as soon as possible. The President is pushing for results.
Mary didn't know what to do about the memo. It wasn't intended for her, but its contents were alarming.
Required:a. Why has Gary Resnick suggested reclassifying some period costs as product costs?b. Why do you think Mary was alarmed about the memo?

Question

rajvir kalra · Accepted Answer

Final Answer :

a. Gary Resnick has suggested reclassifying some period costs as product costs since the company is building up large finished goods inventories in anticipation of the Christmas selling season. Product costs are inventoried and flow through to the income statement only when products are sold. Period expenses, in contrast, flow directly to the income statement. Because most of the finished goods inventories will be held over to the next quarter, reclassifying period costs as product costs will effectively defer recognition of expenses until next quarter and therefore will improve the current quarter's net operating income.
b. Mary Tappin is probably alarmed by both the economic situation the company finds itself in and by the apparent willingness of top management to bend the rules. Improperly reclassifying costs is an indication that top management does not feel like it has to play by the rules or be honest in its dealings with the bank. With such loose ethical standards, Mary may wonder what other unethical things they are doing.

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