Breezy Company

2.
Breezy Company
(This case was prepared by Elizabeth Morris, Lehigh University.)
Breezy Company of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, is a small wholesale distributor of heating and
cooling fans. The company deals with retailing firms that buy small-to medium quantities of
fans. The president, Chuck Breezy, was very pleased with the marked increase in sales over the
past couple of years. Recently, however, the companys accountant informed Chuck that
although net income has increased, the percentage of uncollectibles has tripled. Due to the small
size of the business, Chuck fears he may not be able to sustain these increased losses in the
future. He has asked his accountant to analyze the situation.
Background
In 1998, the sales manager, John Breezy, moved to Alaska, and Chuck hired a young college
graduate to take over the position. The company had always been a family business and,
therefore, measurements of individual performance had never been a large consideration. The
sales levels had been relatively constant because John had been content to sell to certain
customers with whom he had been dealing for years. Chuck was leery about hiring outside of the
family for this position. To incentive based on net sales. The new sales manager, Bob Sellmore,
was eager to set his career in motion and decided he would attempt to increase the sales levels.
To do this, he recruited new customers while keeping the old clientele. After one year, Bob had
proved himself to Chuck, who decided to introduce an advertising program to further increase
sales. This brought in orders from a number of new customers, many of whom Breezy had never
done business with before. The influx of orders excited Chuck so much that he instructed Jane
Breezy, the finance manager, to raise the initial credit level for new customers. This induced
some customers to purchase more.
Existing System
The accountant wrote up a comparative income
statement to show changes in revenues and
expenses over the last three years, shown in
Exhibit A. Currently, Bob is receiving a
commission of 2 percent of net sales. Breezy
Company uses credit terms of net 30 days. At the
end of previous years, bad debt expense
amounted to approximately 2 percent of net
sales. As the finance manager, Jane performs
credit checks. In previous years, Jane had been
familiar with most clients and approved credit on
the basis of past behavior. When dealing with
new customers, Jane usually approved a low
credit amount and increased it after the customer
exhibited reliability. With the large increase in
sales, Chuck felt that the current policy was
restricting a further rise in sales levels. He decided to increase credit limits to eliminate this
restriction. This policy, combined with the new advertising program, should attract many new
customers.
Future
The new level of sales impresses Chuck and he wishes to expand, but he also wants to keep
uncollectibles to a minimum. He believes the amount of uncollectibles should remain relatively
constant as a percentage of sales. Chuck is thinking of expanding his production line but wants to
see uncollectibles drop and sales stabilize before he proceeds with this plan.
Required:
Analyze the weaknesses in internal control and suggest improvements.
Based on the problem, weve identified three internal control weaknesses namely, 1.)
Authorization of control, 2.) Terms of trade and lastly, 3.) Reward Incentives.
For Authorization of Control
We suggest that they set credit limits based on outside credit verification for initial credit limits.
We also encourage them to establish decision criteria to increase credit limit such as examining
payment history because inappropriate credit limits may be a reason that bad debt expense is
increasing disproportionately with sales
For Terms of Trade
We suggest that they offer sales discounts for early payment and charge a finance charge for
payments not made within 30 days.
For Reward Incentives
Instead of using net sales, use net sales less uncollectible accounts.

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