Kudler_Brief

Kudler’s Data Table Analysis Kudler Fines Foods is a rapidly growing company that was founded in 1998. Kudler began using Microsoft Access as their selected tracking database for data related to customers, orders and inventory. The fine food products that Kudler sells are perishable and therefore must be properly managed to prevent spoilage. This paper will look at the database tables from the accounting perspective, provide recommendations for improvement and create a pivot table to help Kudler’s management team improve their decision making process. Evaluate the design elements of the data tables from an accounting perspective. The financial information is first organized into departments, then by the accounting codes, item, and then the total amount of sales transactions for the item code. Then the data is counted by how many quantities of the items were in inventory during the reporting period. The design of the data table maximizes the visual presentation of the information for the financial data. This type of design allows the information user to easily identify what items belong in a specific department, and how many items are on hand to arrive at the total cost. Using the total quantity on hand, the user can easily calculate the average purchase price for a specific item. See Figure 1. Recommend improvements to the data table The pivot table and the data tables can be improved by rearranging the codes in a chronologic order; also by sorting the data in a list of product inventory levels. These improvements will facilitate easier monitoring for a department that has many items to sell. “Sorting data would enable to visualize quickly and understand the data better, organize and find the data that they want and ultimately make more effective decisions” (Birnbaum, 2003, pg89). Pivot table can improve decision-making for Kudler’s management “Kudler are faced with information overload with vast amounts of detailed data being generated as part of standard operations” (Kudler Fine Foods). The visualization of the information is very important in the decision making process (Ferreira, n.d., pg. 6). Management sometimes needs to make immediate decisions and a lot of different numbers can slow down the decision making process. The pivot table keeps records of the movement of inventory in and out of a specific store and also provides a view to a single set of data. By using the improved data tables and the pivot table, Kudler will be able to identify how much inventory is left in the store, which inventory items need to be re-order and which items need to be moved in and out of the warehouse. The pivot table is helpful because with it Kudler can make a quick summary of the data from a worksheet and can find out the totals, average counts of the inventory items. See Figure 2. To provide quality and quantity to Kudler’s customers, inventory management must be a top priority for Kudler. Kudler’s management teams of the various departments are held responsible to ensure that the levels of inventory are kept at a level to meet the demand. The pivot table will help to improve the decision making process for Kudler’s management team. The pivot table can also help Kudler’s management team to calculate how much products are in stock at the store and how many products needs to re-ordered. Figure 1 - Entity Relationship Diagram [pic] Figure 2 – General Ledger Inventory Pivot Table | | | |Sum of Amount |  | |Summary Line Item |Total | |Del Mar Bakery Department Merchandise Inventory | $ 12,780.87 | |Del Mar Cheese & Dairy Merchandise Inventory | $ 62,493.55 | |Del Mar Meat and Seafood Merchandise Inventory | $ 32,633.82 | |Del Mar Produce Merchandise Inventory | $ 23,718.09 | |Del Mar Wine Merchandise Inventory | $119,566.01 | |Encinitas Bakery Department Merchandise Inventory | $ 10,550.07 | |Encinitas Cheese & Dairy Merchandise Inventory | $ 48,513.96 | |Encinitas Meat and Seafood Merchandise Inventory | $ 26,344.89 | |Encinitas Produce Merchandise Inventory | $ 20,860.66 | |Encinitas Wine Merchandise Inventory | $ 2,438.53 | |La Jolla Bakery Department Merchandise Inventory | $ 22,476.97 | |La Jolla Cheese & Dairy Merchandise Inventory | $ 20,159.07 | |La Jolla Meat and Seafood Merchandise Inventory | $ 15,212.36 | |La Jolla Produce Merchandise Inventory | $ 8,157.24 | |La Jolla Wine Merchandise Inventory | $ 3,093.91 | |Grand Total | $429,000.00 | References Ferreira, Wilden N., n.d., Exceller: A step by step guide to creating your decision support system in Excel, retrieved from UOP online database. Birnbaum, Duane, 2003, Microsoft Excel VBA professional projects, retrieved from UOP online database. University of Phoenix. (2005). Virtual Organizations, Kudler Fine Foods. Retrieved from University of Phoenix ‘rEsource', December 21, 2009.