ITEC 1001 Dr. Stella Smith Spreadsheet Exercise One Sales Qu

ITEC 1001 Dr. Stella Smith Spreadsheet Exercise One Sales Quotes Problem

You are a sales representative for a frisbee company that sells five brands: DeKalb Dragon, Central Centurion, Gwinnett Gladiator, North Nordic, and South Surfer. Each product has different unit costs and mark-up percentages. Your task involves creating a spreadsheet to calculate sales quotes based on unit costs, mark-up, quantity ordered, and shipping costs. The exercise includes preparing a template, copying it for different customers with specified quantities and shipping rates, and making a discount calculation for a specific order. The spreadsheet should be properly formatted with formulas to automatically recalculate totals when quantities or other variables change. Save the spreadsheet at each step, ensuring formulas update correctly to reflect the given order details and shipping charges.

Paper For Above instruction

The exercise outlined by Dr. Stella Smith in ITEC 1001 involves the systematic creation and manipulation of a comprehensive sales quotation spreadsheet for a frisbee company. This task is not only a practical application of basic Excel functions but also a demonstration of understanding cost calculations, markup strategies, and dynamic formula implementation to facilitate efficient sales quoting and order management.

Initially, the project requires constructing a template that neatly displays product details, costs, markup, and calculated selling prices. This template must incorporate essential formulas to ensure automatic recalculations, thus allowing ease of updating for various customer scenarios. The key formulas include calculating unit prices based on unit costs and markup percentages, totaling product sales based on quantities, and including shipping costs calculated per unit. The aesthetics of the spreadsheet are also crucial; with bold, centered, and underlined headings, outlined borders for clarity, and a professional font to enhance readability.

Subsequently, the process involves copying this initial template into additional sheets to simulate different customer orders, each with their specific quantities and shipping rates. For each customer order—automatically recalculated using embedded formulas—the total cost must reflect accurate summations of products and shipping charges. For example, one customer order involves 100 units of product A, 150 of B, with other products not ordered, and a shipping charge of five cents per frisbee; the expected total must match the provided calculation of $2,019.00. The user must ensure formulas are correctly implemented to prevent manual recalculations and to maintain spreadsheet integrity during multiple copies and modifications.

The next step involves replicating these templates further, customizing for different order sizes and shipping rates, such as a larger order of 500 units of product A, 100 units each of products B, C, D, and E, with a seven-cent shipping fee, resulting in an approximate total of $3,528.50. This consistency verifies the spreadsheet's ability to handle increasing order complexities automatically.

A critical component of the exercise is the final scenario involving a significant order from Hong Kong: 10,000 units of Gwinnett Gladiator at a discounted price, with a 15% discount applied to the unit price without altering the mark-up percentage, and an elevated shipping cost of twenty cents per frisbee. This challenge tests the ability to incorporate additional calculations—such as applying known discounts within the existing formulas—and ensuring the final total aligns correctly with the expected $46,625.00 figure. Proper placement of the discount calculation, using formulas that adjust the unit total, prevents manual errors and preserves the integrity of the pricing strategy.

The overall goal of this exercise is to develop a robust, scalable, and accurate spreadsheet model that can be easily adapted for different sales scenarios. Such a model is essential for efficient sales management, ensuring that all calculations are precise and that updates to product costs, mark-ups, order quantities, and shipping rates are seamlessly integrated into the final quote. This exercise not only enhances technical skills in spreadsheet formulation but also emphasizes the importance of attention to detail and professional presentation in business environments.

References

  • Walkenbach, J. (2018). Excel 2019 Power Programming with VBA. John Wiley & Sons.
  • Alexander, M., & Trattner, C. (2020). Excel Data Analysis: Your visual blueprint for analyzing data, charts, and PivotTables. Wiley.
  • Higgins, N., & Ingle, H. (2017). Business Mathematics Using Excel. Pearson.
  • VanderPlas, J. (2016). Python Data Science Handbook. O'Reilly Media.
  • Bloomberg, P. (2019). Business forecast modeling with Excel. Routledge.
  • Microsoft. (2023). Excel for Microsoft 365 Training. https://support.microsoft.com/excel
  • Gaskins, K. (2021). Mastering Excel Formulas and Functions. Packt Publishing.
  • Schneider, G. (2019). Financial analysis using Excel. Springer.
  • Sukumar, P., & Mahesh, S. (2022). Spreadsheet modeling for business decisions. Academic Press.
  • Sharma, S. (2020). Practical Excel for Business Analytics. CRC Press.