7. Case Study – Lightning Wholesale

Lightning Wholesale is a mid-to large-size company that works directly with manufacturers to bring sporting goods and equipment to mid to small-sized retailers.  The company is in Southern Ontario, Canada.  Lightning Wholesale acquires the goods, stores them in its warehouses, and distributes them to retailers, who then sell them to sporting enthusiasts across the province.  Suppliers are global, including those from the United States.

Lightning Wholesale is a dynamic office with global networking, communications, customer service, and complex workflows. Lighting Wholesale depends on its office professionals to support staff and management. Office Professional tasks include clerical support, bookkeeping, customer service, data analysis, and document processing.

Lightning Wholesale cares about its employees and retailers.  Where managers can assist their employees, they try to.  Where retailers need guidance, Lightning Wholesales tries to fill this gap as best they can. In working with its small retailers, many of which are owned and operated by sole proprietors, Lightning Wholesale assists the owners with their pricing to help develop promotional pricing plans and the amounts of the payments that can be advertised.  Lightning Wholesale freely offers help since it means more sales and increased profits for the company.

There are currently a few main tasks for Lightning Wholesale management:

• The payroll needs review for the past fiscal year.
• Costs and expenses need forecasting for the next fiscal year.
• Detailed analysis of office supply orders from quarter to quarter with recommendations for the next fiscal year.
• Forklifts need replacing in the warehouse.
• The next round of co-op students needs a computer.
• The employee appreciation event needs planning for next year.
• Travel expenses for the mobile team need to be summarized for the last fiscal year.

Questions

1. The Customer Service Representatives and the Office Professionals will receive a Q1 bonus due to a better-than-expected quarter revenue result. The Customer Service Representatives will receive $50 more than the Office Professionals. If there are 5 Customer Service Representatives and 3 Office Professionals, how much will everyone get if a total of $1850 is allocated for the bonus?
2.  The manager of Lightning Wholesale decided to treat everyone to lunch to celebrate the upcoming holidays. She decided to tip the server 20%, which increased the meal cost to $625.75. What was the cost of the meal before the tip?
3. The management team at Lightning Wholesale is in the process of analyzing the payroll for all employees. If the Director of Finance has an annual salary that is 3 times the amount of the Office Professionals. How much do they earn if their salaries are $200,000?