Financial Control and Budgeting Assignment: Learning Outcomes and Tasks

Assignment Brief

As part of the formal assessment for the programme you are required to submit a ‘Financial Control and Budgeting assignment. Please refer to your Student Handbook for full details of the programme assessment scheme and general information on preparing and submitting assignments.

Learning Outcomes:

After completing the module, you should be able to:

1. Explore and evaluate the legal, financial, regulatory and structural environment under which health and social care services are provided.

2. Understand and explain the importance of governance and accountability and the manner in which financial aspects of health and social care services are managed and communicated to a range of stakeholders.

3. Produce, present and communicate budgets and product and service costs and make decisions based on sound financial and management accounting theory and practice.

4. Reflect on and demonstrate awareness of, the impact of financial constraints, costs and budgets on health and social care service managers, their clients and other stakeholders. 

Graduate attributes:

Discipline Expertise

Knowledge and understanding of chosen field. Possess a range of skills to operate within this sector, have a keen awareness of current developments in working practice being well positioned to respond to change.

Guidance

Your assignment should include: a title page containing your student number, the module name, the submission deadline and the exact word count of your submitted document; the appendices if relevant; and a reference list in AU Harvard system(s). You should address all the elements of the assignment task listed below. Please note that tutors will use the assessment criteria set out below in assessing your work. You must not include your name in your submission because Arden University operates anonymous marking, which means that markers should not be aware of the identity of the student. However, please do not forget to include your STU number.
Maximum word count: 4000 words

Assignment Tasks

Task 1: Learning outcome 1 and 2 – (30 marks)

(a) Critically analyse the legal, financial and regulatory environment of health and social care. (10 marks)

(b) Critically evaluate the use of alternative funding options such as Private Finance Initiatives (PFI), agency partnerships, competitive tendering and outsourcing in the health and social care sector. (10 marks)

(c) Discuss agency theory in the context of the NHS. Explain the importance of and ways of communicating with stakeholders in the context of budgeting. (10 marks) (LO 1 & 2, 30 marks – 1500 words)

Task 2: Learning outcome 3 and 4 – (35 marks)

Write a 2000 word briefing document covering the following points;

(a) Critically discuss the impact of financial constraints, costs and budgets on health and social care service managers, their clients and other stakeholders.  (15 marks)

(b) Explain the particular challenges of budgeting in public sector organisations (5 marks)

(c) Critically discuss the advantages and disadvantages of incremental and zero-based budgeting. (15 marks) (LO 3 & 4, 35 marks – 2000 words)

Task 3: Learning outcome 3 – (25 marks)

Sams Ltd is specialized in producing and selling washing machines.  In 2018, the manufacturing cost per unit included:

                                                                                      £

Fixed costs for the year ended 31 December 2018 were:

                                                                                          £000

Fixed manufacturing                                                         1,100

Fixed selling and distribution                                            1,450

Fixed administrative                                                           675

The company produced and sold 220,000 units at £225 per unit.

In 2019, management has decided to increase the selling price by 25% and to maintain the same contribution margin ratio as last year. This increase in price is to meet an increase of £1,450,000 in fixed costs in 2019. The company has produced and sold the same quantity in 2019 as last year.

Required

(a) Calculate the break-even point and margin of safety in both units and revenue for the two years, 2018 and 2019, and briefly comment upon the results. (10 marks)
(b) Critically discuss key assumptions attached to the breakeven model, within the light of the reality of today’s business environments. (15 marks) (LO 3, 25 marks – 500 words)