Managerial Accounting

AC301-­‐112 CW1.2: Indivudual Reflective Essay

Lecturer: Mrs. Valerie Racine Submitted by: Hong Nhung LE_April Student ID: leho090391 Submission date: January13th, 2012

Accounting is a process that has been around for many millennia. As a third year student at SHMS, this subject has been following me for three years, which was first seemed to be too complicated and struggling in solving the problem; therefore as long as understanding the core issue, it excites me the most. In this third year, I was introduced to the “game”, which is about analyzing, predicting, decision making and calculating the financial analysis.

Through three given course works, I realize that in accounting, there are always two basic notions; the first one is accountancy is a profession and it is also consider as the methodology. It is basically defined as the method of measuring financial figures to bring assurance of decision, which is primarily utilized by managers, investors, and bankers.

While working on this project, I have had an amazing opportunity to work within my team through five months of theory class in SHMS; we went through many challenges as well as disagreement in decision making but overall, we could understand and help each other out regarding putting the best effort into the project. Consequently, our hotel is improving day by day and it is getting more and more profit in contrast with the previous situation when we first looked at it. Compared to my expectation; actually, I did not put too much hope into the hotel to get profit in year 7 but after deciding to focus more in marketing and advertising as well we refurbishment such as contract cleaning and soft goods redo the entire area of the hotel, the performance of the hotel is totally different. In my opinion, good decision has been made was the refurbishment and marketing campaign. After choosing carefully the activities and renovation action that are relevant to our hotel’s economy level, it takes quite a long time to finish all these redoes and cleaning contracts, but we still manage to reach our goals in year 7 and we are doing very well in year 8. In the mean time, the room rate and F&B price of our hotel are quite low compared to other four hotels, which is consider to be bad decision. This results in low break-­‐even period and revenue getting in each year. Before getting involved into the game, our set up plan break even in between year 4 and year 6 and reducing the cost at least 2% of total revenue every year. However, the fact is that we only can get back the working capital in year 7 and our cash in bank was always in negative figures as we did not have any extra profit but keep going in debt and we still need to pay off the loan monthly with consistent amount. The reason why the plan and the actual game differ that much probably because our team was not able to predict all the fixed and variable cost and the we do not have any thorough marketing campaign as well as our ADR was below 60% for the first five years.

In short, I have learnt that to run a successful business, the manager team needs to work together and figure out how to adjust and predict good resources and overall operating plan that are appropriate to the hotel situation. Timing is also one of the essential elements, especially in this fast paced globalized business world nowadays. In order to succeed and achieve this efficiently, it is essential to access and understand financial or operating figures as well as basic efficient accounting practices in place.