Microsoft Office Essay

Each employee could have a standard hourly rate between $10.00 and $30.00 per hour. †¢ Each employee qualifies to earn overtime at a rate of 1.5 of his or her hourly rate for every hour greater than 40 hours. †¢ Each employee will have a standard 7.65% deduction for social security †¢ Each employee will have a standard 14.00% deduction for Federal Taxes †¢ Each employee will have a standard 5.33% deduction for State Taxes Explain how you will structure and format your worksheet, including titles, column headings, and formulas to calculate payroll variables for each employee to determine â€Å"Net Pay† including and not limited to Total Hours, Gross Pay, Social Security Tax, Federal Withholding Tax, and Sate Withholding Tax. In addition, determine how you would extract overtime hours from a calculated value of â€Å"Total Hours† using a conditional formula. In addition, your supervisor will need this weekly payroll report on a weekly basis and instructed you to keep the payroll history of all weeks within â€Å"1† workbook but has allowed you to decide if you would rather keep the payroll running on one worksheet or by assigning a new worksheet for each week. Using your knowledge learned in this class, descriptively explain whether you would keep all weekly payrolls in one worksheet or assigned to new worksheets by week. Defend your reasoning’s on the approach your take based on what you have learned in this course. (Points : 40) The creation of the Weekly Payroll Workbook Since this is a weekly payroll for construction workers, the computation for Excel will be on a weekly basis. Here are the insights as to how to create the Payroll workbook. Using a separate worksheet, like Sheet1, you need to indicate the Week Number in the sheet. This represents which week in the calendar the payroll is computer. Normally we have 52 weeks in one year so Week Number can be Week 1, Week 2, †¦ Week 52. In this same sheet, enter the names of the 15 employees in the first Column, starting from cell A4 to provide enough cells for heading. You can add and delete rows after this. In cell A1, enter your company name. In cell A2, enter Week No.: 1 for the first week. In cell A3, enter â€Å"Employees† or Employee Names† which will serve as the heading of the table. In cell A4 through A18, enter the names of the employees. For the cell B3 to F3, enter the 5 working days of the week. For G3, enter â€Å"Total Hours Worked†. Now Merge & Center the range B2:F2 and then enter the heading title â€Å"Daily Hours Worked† Now all headings are done and we proceed to entering the formula to compute the total hours each employee had worked. For cell G4, enter the formula =SUM(B4:F4). Then drag to copy this formula up to G18 for the last employee. For I3 enter the heading â€Å"Hourly Rate†. For J3 enter Overtime Rate. Enter the formula for overtime as =I4*1.5 since it will be 1.5 of the regular hourly rate. Column K will be the Hourly Pay and the formula shall be =IF(G4>40,40*I4,G4*I4). This means that if the total hours is greater than 40, it will compute only for 40 hours since the remainder will be an overtime. If it is less than 40, it will compute the actual number of hours multiplied by the rate. Column L is for Overtime Pay and the formula is =IF(G4>40,(G4-40)*J4,0). This means that the computation is done this way: If total is greater than 40, then you subtract the total with 40 and the remainder will be the overtime hours. This will be multiplied by the overtime rate. If it is less than or equal to 40, overtime is set to 0. Column M is for Gross pay and it is the total of Hourly Pay and the Overtime Pay. For the deductions, use columns N, O and P for Social Security, Federal Taxes and State Taxes respectively. The formulas will be: Social Security => =M4*7.65% (Gross Pay times 7.65%) Federal Taxes => =M4*14% (Gross Pay times 14%) State Taxes => =M4*5.33% (Gross Pay times 5.33%) For the total deductions use column Q and the formula shall be =SUM(N4:P4) as the sum of all deductions columns. The NET Pay is Gross Pay – Total Deductions and it can be in column R. Also, it is better to use ONE sheet per weekly payroll so that it will be organized better. You can also easily export sheets to other workbooks in the future if the Excel file gets too bloated after long period of use and the accumulated data in it. 2. (TCO 3) You currently work for an automotive parts supply store. Your company is growing and is considering expansion. The company currently has three locations (North, South, and Central) in one state. Each parts supply store carries inventory in four categories. You have been presented with the sales figures for the last three years for each location and inventory category by store. Based on this information, you’re tasked with analyzing current sales for each store by category and overall total sales by store  and category. Note: This is a four part question. 1.) Explain your approach to setting up your worksheets and organizing the data. 2.) Explain how you will visually represent the data for the total sales of the individual inventory categories for each location for the time periods shown. 3.) Explain how you will visually represent the consolidated data for the sales of all stores and all inventory categories for all time periods in one chart or graph. 4.) Once you have finished the above tasks, you plan to send the Excel workbook to your manager for evaluation. Your manger is presenting your findings to the Board of Directors for justification for additional capital expenditures. The visually representations need to be concise and clear by able to support the requested expenditures. Explain how you would use the integration features of MS Office to incorporate the Excel information into other presentation media. (Points : 40) For the automotive part: 1) Explain how you will visually represent the data for the total sales of the individual inventory categories for each location for the time periods shown. The data can be represented by an Excel chart. Just use the total sales against the corresponding categories compared with the data on store locations. 2) Once you ahve finished the above tasks, you plan to send the Excel workbook to your manager for evaluation. Your manager is presenting your findings to the Board of Directors for justification for additional capital expenditures. The visually representations need to be concise and clear by able to support the requested expenditures. Explain how you would use the integration features of MS Office to incorporate the Excel information into other presentation media. This is easily done by integrating the actual Excel table or range in the PowerPoint presentation. Even better yet, you can â€Å"embed† an Excel chart with live data in the presentation itself. This is a good approach so that the data in the presentation will change when the data in the actual embedded Excel file changes. Look the EXCEL FILE 3. (TCO 4) You are given a spreadsheet with daily sales numbers ordered by date from January 1st to December 31st. You have been tasked with finding the average sales of each month, then to reorder the months so they are listed in order from highest to lowest average sales. Give a step-by-step explanation of how you will rearrange the data so you can analyze the best and worst months. Note: This is a one part question. (Points : 40) For this question, suppose the sales and dates are listed by rows so that January 1st to December 31st are the row labels. A pivot table will help in this task. I will create a pivot table of the data; put the Order dates in row labels and the Average of Sales in Values. Then, I will right click on the dates, select group, and then select groupings by month. This should create a table of Monthly Average sales. Next, I will click the dropdown box under row labels, click More Sort Options, and choose Descending Order by Average of Sales. From here on, I can analyze the best and worst months and make preparations in the following year. 4. (TCO 5) You’ve just joined the staff of the XYZ Manufacturing Company (XYZ, for short). XYZ manufactures only one product, the gizmo. It comes in two sizes, the mini-gizmo and the magna-gizmo. Both are difficult to manufacture, and consequently, the company closely monitors rejected units. The company has three locations, each of which produces both the mini and the magna-gizmos. You are automating the weekly production reports so that you can easily calculate total production for the entire company each week. The mini-gizmo is priced at $3.25 per unit. The magna-gizmo is priced at $7.00 per unit. The unit cost for a reject mini-gizmo is $1.75. The cost for a reject magna-gizmo is $3.50. Respond fully to the following questions regarding this task: Note: This is a two part question. 1.) The managers will e-mail their weekly reports to you on Monday of the following week. You will then produce the summary report. Explain the process for doing this. Give a sample formula to total the number of mini-gizmos produced by the entire company in a week. 2.) Each week, you will present the combined report to your boss, who wants to see both the summary and the individual sheets for each location. You want to add a header with the date and your name to each page. What is the easiest way to do this? Explain the process. (Points : 40) First, I will consolidate the worksheets into one workbook by doing Home-Cells-Format-Move or Copy sheet. Now, for this data, I will expect the columns to be separated, with labels proper mini-gizmo, proper magna-gizmo, rejected mini-gizmo, rejected magna-gizmo, and row labels of days in the week. After that, I will sum all of the column data below, so I will arrive at the sum of all proper and reject gizmos. Suppose the proper mini-gizmos are in column B and rejected mini-gizmos are in column D, then a sample formula to total all the mini-gizmos produced in a week would be Sum(B2:B8,D2:D8). This is already located in the Summary worksheet, after consolidating the data from four locations. This is assuming that the data is given per week, divided into 7 days. I will do the same for the magna-gismos. Afterwards, just below the Sums, I will put another row labeled Revenue. Then I will multiply the Sums by the respective prices, 3.25 for the proper mini-gizmo, 7.00 for the proper magna-gizmo, 1.75 for  the rejected mini-gizmo, and 3.50 for the rejected magna-gizmo. 5. (TCO 9) You have been tasked with analyzing an extremely large amount of data and to ultimately produce a report to share with the board of directors. The data is currently in a text file and has over two thousand records of data. Explain how you would use Excel to analyze this data and organize it to prepare a written report. Be very specific on the variety of tools you would use and the steps you would go through to analyze the data and to ultimately prepare a detailed report with recommendations. Since the data is in text file, I have to open Excel first. Then, I will go to File-Open, and then choose All Files. I can now open the text file in Excel. Upon opening, a Text Import Wizard will appear. I can choose Delimited or Fixed width, depending on the data. Click next, then I can choose my own delimiters if it is Delimited. I can also click anywhere on the preview box to separate the data to my liking. After that, I can designate their Text Formats. After clicking finish, I have a whole data of text file in Excel. Since it came from a text file, there may be formatting issues. For example, I will click all the numbers in the data, then Find and Replace spaces with nothing so that the numbers are not in General Format but in Number Format. I will also spellcheck the whole worksheet for grammar and spelling errors. After all this is done, I can now start with the analysis. There are lots of things I can do from summing the data to averaging them to creating pivot tables and even pivot charts. In charts, I can choose to add trend lines and data tables for the charts to be more detailed. After all the analysis is done, I will prepare a written report in MS Office by copy pasting the charts (the visual representations of the analysis) and explaining and interpreting them afterwards. Then, I can provide conclusions and recommendations to complete the analysis.

A New Miss America: Nina Davuluri

Born in Syracuse, New York, and raised in Oklahoma and Michigan, it is hard to pick a more American story than that of Davuluri. The daughter of Indian doctors who immigrated to the United States in the early 1980s, Miss America embodies all ideas of the great American Dream. But an uneducated public is trying to crush that dream with their negativity. Misidentifying Davuluri as Muslim, Arab, Egyptian, and Indonesian, among other ethnicities, Twitter users did not Just stop at proclaiming hat, essentially, non-white participants of the pageant should be disqualified.They also linked her to terrorist organizations, such as A1 Qaeda. Some took it even further, outraged that she should be crowned in the same week as September 1 1 . Those who correctly acknowledged her Indian heritage made racist Jokes, playing on the stereotype that Indian-Americans often work in the grocery and food industries. It is ironic that the 24-year-old New Yorker is bullied about her race after her answer in t he question round of this weekend's pageant. Asked by Miss America udge Carla Hall about TV host Julie Chen's plastic surgery to appear â€Å"less Asian,† Davuluri responded, â€Å"I've always viewed Miss America as the girl next door.And the girl next door is evolving as the diversity in America evolves†¦ Definitely be confident in who you are. † One has to question if Davuluri is staying confident after her crowning considering the negative feedback from the public, although she is putting on a brave face. â€Å"I'm so happy this organization has embraced diversity,† she told The Associated Press. â€Å"There are children watching at home who can finally relate to a new Miss America. Addressing her â€Å"non-American† haters, she said, â€Å"l always viewed myself as first and foremost American. † Davuluri was not the only contestant rebuffed for her race.Fellow Top 5 runners- up Miss California Crystal Lee and Miss Minnesota Rebecca Yeh go t backlash for their Asian roots. Exactly thirty years after Vanessa Williams was crowned as the first black Miss America, it was refreshing to see the racial diversity at this year's pageant, with 13 non-white contestants. It showed a forward-thinking Miss America, focused more on intelligence, drive, talent, and poise and an attempt to move the pageant into the 1st century. Yet the American people were not yet ready for the group of diverse, educated young women who are the face of the future America. According to Census Bureau reports, America will be much less white than it is today, with the percentage of blacks, Asians, and Hispanics increasing in our population. ) These women are independent and strong, they represent many ditterent backgrounds, they are accessible, they are role models, they are real. They do not fit the stereotypical 1950s pageant queen archetype. They are more than that. The Judges could see that, choosing to focus on inner beauty and accomplishments. Some of those who verbally fought Miss America's title were firmly set on who they believed should be queen bee: Miss Kansas Theresa Vail.The 22-year-old blonde beauty is only the second military woman to participate in the pageant. As a sergeant in the U. S. Army and the first Miss America contestant to bear tattoos, Vail was a fan favorite long before the cameras starting rolling at the Atlantic City show. A humorous and highly talented young woman, Vail made it to the Top 10 but was cut from the competition after the talent round. Online, she was well-like because she mbodied the â€Å"real† American woman: she can sing, she has tattoos, she likes to hunt, she is poised but goofy and self-deprecating.She represents middle America. But on closer inspection, she does not embody America as it is today. She embodies what an ideal America used to be: middle class, white, Christian, rural, the picture- perfect WASP woman. So for all the progress the pageant made to depict a well- ro unded, diverse America, the public still gravitated, predictably, to the â€Å"All American Beauty. † â€Å"l swear I'm not racist but this is America. † How has this come to define America, a ountry renown for its opportunities, for its freedoms, and for being the greatest melting pot in the world?How dare you deny Miss America, a talented and intelligent woman, her shot at the American dream? Why are we stuck in archaic mindsets of who deserves to be praised for their accomplishments and then rewarded with scholarship funds to pursue their passions? Who are we to Judge? To Twitter user @JAyres15 and to all of those ganging up on Nina Davuluri: you may swear you are not a racist, but I swear that you are. You hide behind prejudice and bigotry, you are close-minded, and you are the non-American.

Australian Pizza Wars (pp 687-689) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Australian Pizza Wars (pp 687-689) - Essay Example A reputable pizza marketing magazine suggests that pizza companies should begin using promotions which describe dollars off rather than percentages when using marketing promotion (clippermagazine.com, 2009). This is an aspect of consumer behaviour where they feel dollars off promotions are more incentive to buy products than through direct mailings which offer percentages off the pizza product. Currently, Pizza Hut offers reduced priced pizzas, using marketing promotion to encourage volume ordering to offset the costs of marketing, as identified by the case study. This is an ongoing pricing strategy, however Pizza Hut maintains the opportunity to use unique graphics, logos, and other consumer-oriented images to create direct mailing (or even Internet coupon offerings) which appeals to the psychographic aspects of buyer behaviour. Kurtz (2007) identifies that consumers are strongly driven toward promotional materials, in direct mailing form, which utilise well-known corporate logos an d can be entertaining at the same time. This would give Pizza Hut the opportunity to use pricing as only a portion of the marketing strategy but use innovative sales promotions, based on consumer behaviour and graphics presentation, to make their business stand out over competition. It would be unrealistic to believe that pricing is no long relevant for sales promotions, just the method by which Pizza Hut appeals to the buying audience should be altered. This could also give Pizza Hut the opportunity to sign up many different customers, through unique promotions which offer contests or similar incentives, giving Pizza Hut several niche markets to sell product. Because consumers in Australia are beginning to explore healthy eating options, these direct mailing, innovative graphic marketing tools can highlight new menu options for the healthier eating client. The case study did not provide

Environment Factors Paper Research Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Environment Factors - Research Paper Example A business environment is the collection of factors that affects the operations of a business. Business environment can further be categorized into external and internal factors. The success of a company is evaluated by its ability to utilize its business environment. This paper will, therefore, analyze the business environment of the Coca-Cola Company. The Coca-Cola success story begun in Atlanta, Georgia, before the drink became a major drink in the global market (Stonebtb, 2010). Venturing into the global market created a new set of problems for the company that could only be overcome through an appropriate combination of various factors within its business environment. Global marketing involves complex processes due to the number of parties involved in the distribution of goods and services. Global economic interdependency is viewed as a remedy to the complexity of international trade. Currently, Coca-Cola has associate firms in different countries that market or produce Coca-Col a products. This phenomenon is a form of international interdependence. International interdependence is, however, subjected to international business law and restrictions. Most countries have laws or policies that are aimed at protecting local businesses and industries. These laws are meant to create a balanced relationship between foreign companies and the mother company. Global interdependence has also contributed to the growth of the Coca-Cola Company by enabling it to acquire a firm foundation within host countries. On the other hand, trade practices and policies regulate relationship between beneficiary firms and the mother company by ensuring equitable distribution of proceeds. Demographic and physical infrastructures of a firm have a great impact in the development of a company. Currently the company has various brands that are associated with different demographic groups within a given society. Different packaging and flavors of soft drinks produced by the company identifiy these brands. The company has different packaging for various groups within the society. Different packaging and brands names are also associated with different genders within different societies. Consequently, different flavors of soft drinks produced by the company define the demographic characteristics of the consumers. These demographic infrastructures strengthen the company’s brand. In addition, the company demographic infrastructure creates or enables the customers to identify themselves with various brands that the company produces. Coca Cola’s physical infrastructure includes production facilities and units in different countries across the globe. The company has also a satellite connected communication facility that alleviates global communication and networking. Due to its scope of operation, the company considers culture as an important aspect of strategic management. The company markets its products across different cultures and this creates the needs for cultural sensitivity. In addition, the company employs a large number of employees from different cultural background. The Hofstede’s cultural dimension index has been useful to the company in determining the different roles to be assigned to members of different societies working within the company. Cultural differences within the company have, therefore, enabled the company to acquire a global

Personality Disorders Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Personality Disorders - Essay Example The paper reviews how chaotic lifestyles coupled with chronic life interruptions, frayed identities, and fractured support systems influence characteristics of individuals suffering from personality disorders. Not everyone finds it easy to relate with others according to the society’s expectations. In a manual by the American Psychiatric Association (2000), such manifested deviance is referred to as a personality disorder. An individual may find him or herself incapable of relating with others in conformity with accepted societal modes. Mental health disorders are categorized using a multidimensional approach envisaged in the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental health disorders by assessing clinical syndromes, developmental and personality disorders, physical conditions, psychosocial sensors, and highest level of functioning. Psychology professionals often encounter various challenges in assigning accurate diagnoses of personality disorders due to the complexity of diagnosis. In the said case study, the patient does not recognize that he has a personality disorder. Judging from the age of his mother, he is a middle aged man who feels no need to associate with other human be ings and spends his time playing video games. As described by American Psychiatric Association (2000), the first axis offers descriptions of clinical symptoms that cause considerable consequences in the client’s behavior and personality. The disorders are categorized into disorders of adjustment, anxiety and pervasive development. The case study patient seems to be suffering from adjustment disorders with depressed moods. The patient, who is in his middle age, seems to suffer from the effects of his father refusing him playtime with his age mates when he was a boy. He recalls instances of his father chasing away his playmates and cites this as reason why he stays indoors playing

Social classes and education Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Social classes and education - Essay Example Racial theorist Shelby Steele felt that racial discrimination determined their lack of effort to achieve what others do.(Ogbu) The other issue that needs attention in determining African-American children’s education is the methodology used for teaching. In a multicultural urban elementary school, black teachers in an attempt to explore the best instruction to serve the black students felt the necessity of the attitude of â€Å"I want the same thing for everyone else’s children as I want for mine,† in teachers.(Delpit, 1998) Rectifying the cultural hegemony in teaching and empowering children the freedom of expression and culture in learning and inculcating child-centered approaches were found to be some of the steps. One way of achieving this end is by reminding children about their power to shape meaning and rationale. J Anyon found out that pedagogical care and practice differed in schools of different social classes.(Anyon, 1980) He studied a total of five schools and found out that the first two which were working class’ schools emphasized on rote behavior, gave less explanation and used less textbooks. The third school which mostly belonged to middle class parents had the system of getting only the right answer and no serious attention was given. The fourth one, which he called as the affluent professional school encouraged in individual thought and expression. The fifth one called executive elite schools which comprised children of the capitalist class, was the only school that worked on the development of analytical and intellectual powers through logical reasoning. Jonathan Kozol, a teacher who was being fired by a school for having his students read a poem that wasn’t prescribed in the list, does not disagree with the trend of this segregated school system (Kozol, 1991). He cites an example of a public school in New York which conducted classes in abandoned

Cartoons and its Effect on Children Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Cartoons and its Effect on Children - Essay Example Since the seventies, there had been numerous studies to determine the effect of television on children. This brief essay discusses the effects of cartoons on children since the 1990s. Essentially, the cartoons that gained popularity in the 1990s deviated from the traditional. Together with the conventional kids’ cartoons such as Tiny Toons, Animaniacs, and the still popular Spongebob Squarepants, the nineties ushered such satirical animated programmes as the Simpsons, King of the Hill, Space Ghost Coast-to-Coast, and the highly irreverend Beavis and Butt-head and South Park. Clearly, the latter group contained more of adult content and are not meant for children, but lack of parental vigilance (and the misleading format of the shows) has enabled many children to watch them with regularity. More recently, the cartoons that had become popular were those that departed from humor. The term â€Å"cartoons† traditionally implies comedy and humor; however, cartoons portray vio lence in a comedic context, such as those elements in Samurai Jack, X-Men Evolution, and Batman: The Animated Series, which portray â€Å"dark† situations. At times, violence is portrayed without the comedy and make use of characters who look realistic (as against the fantastic), a form of cartoons R.B. Haynes (1978) calls â€Å"authentic† because of its closeness to reality. Effects of cartoons on children Because of its implications on children’s future behaviour, violence became a major interest in the study of the effects animated programs. In the 1990s, cartoons portrayed violence in the form of minor acts; for instance, rarely is death depicted, and never is rape portrayed. Cartoons also â€Å"sanitized† the outcomes of violence, by symbolically depicting or merely implying pain or suffering without tangibly showing it. (Potter & Warren, 1998 in Kirsh, 2006, p. 161). The principal concern of researchers is that comedy in cartoons may potentially tri vialize or camouflage the underlying violence in cartoons (Kirsh, 2006). However, it is possible for children’s reactions to the same cartoons, or any stimuli for that matter, to be different, depending upon their interests and personality (Smith, Cowie & Blades, 2003). It was suggested that cartoons may be harmful particularly for little children, because the have difficulty distinguishing reality from fantasy (Peters & Blumberg, 2002). The present computer generated, 3D animated shows are particularly convincing because, where the character design significantly departs from the fantastic and imitates reality, the audience (particularly very young children) are drawn to the center of the story, and for the duration of the presentation there is a suspension of disbelief. As mentioned, cartoon violence has been the topic of much research, with the notion that children tend to imitate the violence they witness in cartoons. Some investigations, however, tended to suggest that in the case of preschoolers, the effects are not as severe as had been speculated. Very young children have very limited comprehension of the content of television programs, but their moral reasoning is at a rather developed stage – described as â€Å"sophisticated† (Peters & Blumberg, 2002:143). Another adverse effect of animation is the extraordinarily close affinity of children with certain psychiatric disorders to televised cartoon shows. Particularly significant is the effect of animation on children clinically diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In a study of 24 boys eight-to-twelve years of age, it was determined that 59 percent of the group preferred cartoons, significantly one-third more than the