Authorization Of Transactions

Description

help me finish this auditing practice exam ,time is 8th Nov 13:30-15：00pm （China beijin time )

i will provide the lectures for u to review

this is a limited time practice exam

Hi – and welcome to the audit team at Auditopia Partners. I know that you’ve had audit experience at a Big 4 firm – so we look forward to having you on the team as one of our Audit Seniors.

Your first client is going to be Merivale – a new client specialising in hospitality. Merivale began as a fashion house, but under the current CEO Justin Hemmes (son of founders John and Merivale Hemmes) – they have limited fashion holdings and focus now on hospitality. Recently, the company has also included up-scale boutique accomodation. You will be working on the audit for the 30 June 2021 year end.

Your first job should be to research the Merivale brand online and understand their business. This includes understanding the impact of COVID19 on the food, hospitality and tourism business.

A junior on the team has also provided you with the following links to newspaper articles of interest to help you start your research (note these articles will automatically open when you access the exam).

Restaurant industry facing critical shortage of chefs, managers and sommeliers (Links to an external site.) – SMH

International students in hospitality and tourism can soon work more than 40 hours (Links to an external site.) – ABC News

You’ve also been provided with the following organisation chart by the Merivale team and a set of financial statements.

(Note: This organisation chart has been constructed using fictional staff and names – please do not attempt to contact any of these people in real life!)

An organisation chart for Merivale group. Please contact Amanda if you need a text version of this org chart for accessibility purposes.

The Audit Manager (Camille) has also prepared the following information for you to read in preparation for the audit engagement:

COVID19 had hit Merivale hard. Closures due to lockdowns, especially in Melbourne, made trying to manage the business very unpredictable.

Merivale hire a significant number of temporary visa holders. They work in roles from restaurant managers to servers to kitchen staff.

Measures that Merivale implemented during COVID19 included private dining events for limited patrons, luxury meal home delivery, online cooking classes, online cocktail making classes (which included a kit of cocktail ingredients delivered to your home).

The business was eligible for JobKeeper and received it for 6 months.

The business is focused on high margin, lower volume – a luxury and exclusive experience.

To attempt to cut costs, many of their venues were shuttered/shut down and staff let go. Given most were casual and part time workers, redundancies were not offered. Full time salaried staff were put to work in other roles.

Delays were arranged with landlords who owned various premises that Merivale group lease.

The business uses Xero to handle all of its accounting. They also use a variety of apps in their app stack that integrate with Xero. These apps include:

Billing

Supplier management

Customer relationship management

Payroll

Employee scheduling

Inventory

Point of sale

Payments

Management reporting and analysis dashboard

The business has spent extra during COVID19 on additional cleaning and sanitising stations.

The health departments in each state and territory do not report any breaches of state COVID19 rules in relation to social distancing, health or food safety. This has been especially challenging because famous spots like The Ivy are renown for large parties frequented by social climbers, Instagram influencers and old-money rich kids alike.

The marketing department focused on attracting extremely wealthy customers who could pay a significant premium for a dining and/or entertainment experience. These customers were geographically focused within 15km of a Merivale location to ensure that foods remained at a high quality during transit.

They also developed luxury online offerings such as $300 cooking classes for kids cupcakes and $800 seafood cooking lessons. These online classes included all ingredients, even necessary speciality cookware. All contained within luxury packaging and hand delivered by Merivale staff.

Another online sales opportunity was one-on-one mentoring sessions via Zoom with CEO Justin Hemmes.

The board of directors is led by the Merivale Group founders as co-chairs. The other directors include private investors and high profile business people. These directors include Brian Hartzer, Ken Barton and Jean-Sebastien Jacques.