This essay is on a business simulation for Tim's Coffee Shoppe. This is a final assignment for course AB 298: Associate's Capstone in Accounting. This example essay was provided to a students in Kaplan University to assist them with completing their own paper.

Essay Prompt:

Executive Summary

This section provides an overview of your findings. This section should be no more than half a page at the most, but a paragraph that is about 6-8 sentences is about the right length. This summarizes everything you wrote about in your report. This is also the conclusion for your report. If a business person did not have time to read an entire report or business plan, the Executive Summary should be the overview of the information.

Regulations and Management

Summary

Provide a paragraph or two regarding what you observed concerning Tims adherence to regulations. Identify the impact that at least 4 Federal laws and 1 state law have on Tims Coffee Shoppe.

Provide a detailed summary of the overall management area of the business. Then describe any strengths and weaknesses.

Action Items

Based on your analysis, tell Tim what you recommend. Your recommendations should contain detailed directions of what needs to be done and when. Also, you should defend your recommendations by providing references that support your ideas.Address: the vision statement, short term and long-term goals, federal and state compliance issues, and social responsibility considerations. He may or may not be following some of these.

HR Analysis

Summary

Provide a detailed summary of what you observed in this particular area of the business. Describe any strengths and weaknesses. Look in the files in the back office at all of the employees. Are they valuable? Do Tims employees need more training? What other issues did you notice in the employee files?

Action Items

Based on your analysis, detail for Tim what needs to be done and when to improve this area of the business. Also, you should defend your recommendations by providing references that support your ideas.

Marketing Analysis

Summary

Provide a detailed summary of what you observed in this particular area of the business. How did he advertise? What new ideas can you think of for ways Tims Coffee Shoppe might want to advertise? Who are the customers and what is their feedback? How can he gain new customers.

Action Items

Provide a SWOT Analysis detailing the external threats and opportunities and the internal strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths:

Weaknesses:

Opportunities:

Threats:

Economic Environment/Finance and Accounting/Financial Statements

Summary

Provide a detailed summary of what you observed in this particular area of the business. Look in the drawer labeled Business and the information and draw some conclusions about the economic environment of Tims Coffee Shoppe.

Action Items

Discuss the Economic environment and impact on Tims business. Use your accounting and finance knowledge to interpret the Balance Sheet and the Profit & Loss statement. Explain what Tim should do based on your understanding of the financial picture.

Problem Solving/Recommendations

Summary

Give five recommendations on what Tims Coffee Shoppe can do to improve their business.

References

Associates Capstone in Management. (2012). Retrieved from Tim's Coffee Shoppe simulation:

http://extmedia.kaplan.edu/business/Media/AB299/Tims_Coffee_Shop/index.htm

Contents

Executive Summary 2

Regulations and Management 2

Summary 2

Action Items 3

HR Analysis 3

Summary 3

Action Items 4

Marketing Analysis 4

Summary...
...

An overview of the findings is included in this report that includes several recommendations such as adding a modern point-of-sale (POS) system that can handle order management and accept modern forms of payment (credit/debit processing); a system that could also handle employee scheduling would be a useful function. It is also recommended that Tim invest some capital into remodeling the customer area as well as cleaning up the storage and break areas. Tims operations has many points of differentiation compared to its larger competitor, but Tim should more effectively highlight these advantages and take advantage of the opportunities this plan outlines.

Regulations and Management

Summary

Tims adherence to regulations seems to be mixed. One instance that was noted was that in the break room the mandatory employee posters on the bulletin board were covered by random pieces of information. Another potential violation would be found in the storage room in which coffee beans are being stored on the same shelf as insecticide. However, at the same time, the records regarding the employees and the financial information seems to be in relatively good order.

Tims Coffee Shoppe has not modernized its operations in terms of payment processing and order management. Multiple customers have had their bills be incorrect and the customer feedback clearly reflects this fact. This is clearly a management issue and the payment processing and accounting systems could be easily modernized to improve operations as well as customer satisfaction.

Action Items

Tim should work to clean up and organize both the employee break room and the storage room to ensure that they are in compliance with both human resource laws and regulations, as well as safety and sanitary issues that are present. Although there seems to be adequate documentation for the record keeping, the process could be modernized to make it easier as well as more accurate; especially regarding a POS system that includes credit/debit processing.

HR Analysis

Summary

The coffee shop has two full-time employees and eight part-time employees. Most of the employees seem to be more than content with their positions overall. However, there are a couple employees that are unhappy and one is even planning to go to the competition for employment. The employee of the month program seems to be popular among the employees, however some employees feel that it may have been given to one employee more than others (Elana). Other problems noted have been relatedto dependability and switching shifts without notifying the management.

The assistant store manager seems to be competent overall, but has also received multiple warnings for his conduct with customers. The warnings seem to be improving his overall performance. However, some of his issues seem to be related to his compensation and has voiced complaints.

Action Items

Darryl Cano might be one of the biggest causes for concerns given that he is the assistant manager and a full-time employee who has had a number of warnings regarding is treatment of customers in the business. While he seems like a valuable employee overall, it is likely that he needs more training overall to improve his customer service skills. Another possibility would be to give the managers some…