Accounting & Investing Info for San Antonio A & M
Thursday Sept 6, 2012
The Institute of Management Accountants is having its Student Leadership Conference here in
San Antonio Nov 1-3, 2012.
The schedule of events is not up yet but I will be going, I am sure the events will be worthwhile and I can earn some CPE. More on this as I learn about it.
Thursday Sept 6 2012
I recall seeing just this set up in the Sci Fi movie Outland in about 1981. One could play golf on a simulated
course on a giant tv screen. Well sci fiction once again become science fact.
These set ups are available for home, gym or apparnetly indoor gold centers-finally no mosquitos.
Now I know what you are going to ask so I checked
$34 big Ones on E Bay. But that is the commercial version.
Wed Sept 5 2012
I have made several posts about the puzzling sad state of the non profit arts in San Antonio.
MY first post on the Symphony was October 8, 2011. We also noted the irony of spending $195 M on the Tobin Center, supposedly to house groups like the Symphony, which was draining funds from you guessed it, the symphony.
On June 18 2012 we examined the bankrupt San Antonio Opera as well as a look back at multiple articles on the Alameda Museo, yes the one that TAMUSA is taking over. Be sure to check out the article on the Opera the day before that June 17 2012.
We looked at the Briscoe Museum as costs escalated from the high teens to $30 M, and still climbing.
But today the Symphony is in the news again. Current debt is about $850,00. Now here is a funny for you. The Symphony musicians have asked the National Labor Relations Board to determine if the symphony underpaid them. They want $225,000 in wages they say are owed, that of course the Symphony does not have or it would have paid them. Where they expect the money to come from I cannot imagine.
As accountants you will no doubt eventually be involved witha non profit. Plan to ask the hard questions before things head south. Clearly that never happened in any of the instances I cite.
This would be an hilarious sitcom if it were not real. Someone takes an otherwise perfectly service able City Auditorium and spends an whopping $195 M to have a REAL Performing Arts Center. Then the Opera goes broke, the symphony is in the red and bickering with musicians and having trouble raising money as the Tobin Center itself is gulping down donations. The Opera went toes up.
Meanwhile the SA Met Ballet has a workable business model. The dancers are students are not paid a salary. Ballet stars are featured in production and they act as mentors for the students. Perhaps there is a lesson here for other aspiring arts groups! This is work able model that beenfits its participants and the community.
Tuesday Sept 4 2012
The line wa just too long at MCD, and needing gas anyway I headed out to the Valero down the road. Sure enough the convenience store there featured a Subway, with no one in line, and open for breakfast, gee who knew Subway was in the Egg McMuffin War?
I am teachcing two classes focused on managerial accounting. My goal is to get students to thinking about cost concepts. My trip to the Subway was a great example of just that. Now that Subway has many more locations than MCDs, it is becoming more aggressive to offer the franchisee more options to compete.
I scanned the menu and asked for a simple breakfast look a like Egg McMuffin. Now recall that in managerial accounting we want a basic chasis design, be it a hamburger like Five guys or a Toyota Camry
chasis that becomes a cute Lexus, so here were my choices.
1. Flatbread (at right), muffin, or sandwich bread
2. Black Forrest ham (now is that phrase great marketing or what, imagine raising hogs in the German Black Forrest) or Bacon
3. White or yellow egg
4. three choices of cheese
5. condiment, mustard or may or ketchup
6. anything else, salt or pepper?
Later in the class we will study establishing standards and gauging variances. Subway had the standards set all right. For each choioce the server had a separate plastic compartment where the components of my breakfast were stored. When I replied yellow egg, she withdrew a sort of large flat cooked scrambled egg, which she cut in to four pieces using two of them, one for each side of my muffin.
Now class how many permutations could we have from this one exercise, let's count staring with the choice of three bread, I am going down the choices
3 x 2 x 2 x 3 x 3 x 2 = 216 possible combintations for this one basic idea.
I realize that most of the students are quite frankly not really interested in accounting. But I suspect they are interested in business success. What I am trying to accomplish in class and on this blog is to spark your interest in the topic. Again here is an example of
a basic chasis, the breakfast sandwich
standards
mass production
customization at the same time
next time you are in a restaurant, fast food or otherwise, how many examples can you spot of building multiple products off one basic idea.
Consider an Italian restaurant, hmm, we might have a minimum of these choices
spaghetti, fettucini, linguini, rotini, farfalle
meatballs, chicken, shrimp, veal
marinara or vodka or white sauce
that's 5 x 4 x 3 = 60 varieties off the same basic idea, you can easily of course add in artichokes, capers, and a multitude of other choices to take this number much higher
See you in class…
Labor Day Weekend 2012
One day as an undergraduate I watched a scene I remember to this day. A student was standing in the hallway of the UT Austin College of Business office building. He clearly was having difficulty with an accounting question in the textbook. Dr. Griffin, whose advanced accounting text was then in its fourth edition I think, happened by. The student hurriedly asked him The Question. Quickly Dr. Griffin took his unlit cigar out of his mouth, read the question and said oh, you just debti such and such and credit so and so. Having spoken he replaced the cigar, which he used to great advantage as a prop in class, and went about his way. I still recall though the student standing there looking at the text puzzled, his entire expression saying
How'd he do that?
Is there an art to mastering accounting? What do I mean by that? Take a look at Robin Wong's photography blog. You will quicly grasp that Robin is an artist. Even his street shots look well
composed and lit. Why do Robin's shots look professional but yours and mine look like typical snapshots? What is the difference? it is I think
talent
repetition
an artistic way of seeing the world
Professionals have that sense of 'how to do it.' I recall taking my bicycle in with a flat tire. The owner of the shop seemingly threw my bike on his repair stand, spun the wheel, produced a tool from nowhere and next thing h I knew, the tire and tube were off the wheel. The whole thing had taken maybe twenty seconds, how did he do that? Well practice helps a lot. As George Strait says, write that down.
I am interested in your take on these observations. What is the difference in the pro and the amateur, and how does one move up the ladder?
I took piano lessons as a kid and tried it again in college. I got to where I could play the notes in a recognizable fashion, but I was never a musician. Jerry Lee Lewis plays the piano, he is a musician. He's a pro, I was just hitting notes on an instrument.
Thursday August 30 2012
INterninSanAntonio will have its next event
Fall Internship Fair Info
Event Date: Saturday, September 8th from 2:00 – 5:00PM
Event Location: San Antonio Food Bank at 5200 Old Highway 90 West San Antonio, TX 78227
Event Details: To see what to expect, watch this quick 3 minute Video of a prior Internship Fair
Are any of you interested in attending? I am the Intern Coordinator for Accounitng. Let me know of your interest.
Thursday August 30 2012
MCD, SBUX, and CMG are all working to speed up the service during peak hours. This is an excellent example of what we study in managerial accounting.
There are several concepts in volved here. The British refer to a waiting line as a que. Queing theory is all about how long someone will wait in line. Another concept is the idea of a constraint. The lunch hour so to speak only lasts so long. And the key to restaurant is traditionally the number of times one turns over the tables, how many tables of people does one serve during the lunch hour. Clearly this idea is expanded with take out and drive thru windows. MCD for example has a standard of 90 seconds as the time between the drive in order and when you get your sack of burgers at the window. Indeed some locations are adding a second drive in window.
So the idea is to maximize the number of sales in a given time. This is done by eliminating non value added activities, the idea of just in time inventory supply chain delivery and activity based costing. The next time you are in a fast food joint, pay attention to what they are doing and how they do it, if one of the servers disappears into the back of the store, something went wrong.
Thursday August 30 2012
The Texas Highway Patrol Museum was supposed to help the families of officer slain in the line of duty. But as so often happens, eveyrone's money is no one's money in the public sector. The Texas Atty General sued the museum and it is now being liquidated.
Here is yet another example of the importance of internal conrols, internal auditing, and the value of an indepdent external audit. Far too often individuals use funds for their own purposes rather than the original goal of the enterprise. If you are ever appointed to a Board of a non profit, plan to ask the hard questions.
Wednesday August 29 2012
I happened to mention that the most important book you wil ever read is Dale Carnegie's
How to Win Friends and Influence People.
The book was written in the 1930s but while times change people don't. The book has sold millions of
copies and when I amazoned it I was amazed to discover that new editions still fetch $12. My yellowed copy reported it was the 18th printing, an amazing record for a non fiction book.
Carnegie sums it up this way
You will make more friends in two months by showing an interest in other people than
you will make in two years trying to get them interested in you.
No kidding.
Carnegie himself was amazed at the results. Even during the Depression the book sold thousands of copies, people would flock to his seminars.
My students have suggested, and I agree, that it would benefit from a re write to have more modern examples in the book. Admimttedly Carnegie of course writes in his own day and age, Clark Gable, not Brad Pitt, was the reigning movie star. And the letters he re prints are dated but still genuine.
Try it, you wil like it.
Wednesday August 29, 2012
TAMUSA hosts free films the second saturday of each month. The are shown in the larger auditorium at the rear of the Brooks Building.
|
September 8 |
Moneyball
|
PG-13 |
Tracy Hurley &
Douglas Carter |
|
October 13 |
Too Big To Fail
|
PG-13 |
Syed Harun |
Professor Elam 