Cumberland County Senior Services is a non-profit organization devoted to providing essential services to seniors who live in their own homes within the Cumberland County area. Three services are provided for seniors-home nursing, Meals on Wheels, and housekeeping. In the home nursing program, nurses visit seniors on a regular basis to check on their general health and to perform tests ordered by their physicians. The Meals on Wheels program delivers a hot meal once a day to each senior enrolled in the program. The housekeeping service provides weekly housecleaning and maintenance services. Data on revenue and expenses for the past year follow:

The head administrator of Cumberland County Senior Services, Judith Ewa, is concerned about the organization's finances and considers the operating income of $5,000 last year to be razor-thin. (Last year's results were very similar to the results for previous years and are representative of what would be expected in the future.) She feels that the organization should be building its financial reserves at a more rapid rate in order to prepare for the next inevitable recession. After seeing the above report, Ewa asked for more information about the financial advisability of discontinuing the housekeeping program.

The depreciation in the housekeeping category is for a small van that is used to carry the house-keepers and their equipment from job to job. If the program were discontinued, the van would be donated to a charitable organization. Depreciation charges assume zero salvage value. None of the general administrative overhead  would be avoided if the housekeeping program were dropped, but the liability insurance and the salary of the program administrator would be avoided.

Required:

1. Should the housekeeping program be discontinued? Explain. Show computations to support your answer.

2. Recast the above data in a format that would be more useful to management in assessing the long-run financial viability of the various services.

Meals on Home Total Nursing Wheels Housekeeping $260,000 $240,000 160,000 80,000 Revenues . $900,000 490,000 $400,000 Variable expenses . Contribution margin Fixed expenses: Depreciation Liability insurance Program administrators' salaries. 120,000 140,000 210,000 190,000 410,000 68,000 42,000 8,000 40,000 7,000 20,000 15,000 20,000 40,000 52,000 120,000 $ 20,000 38,000 37,000 48,000 120,000 $ (40,000) 115,000 General administrative overhead*. 180,000 405,000 $ 5,000 80,000 165,000 Total fixed expenses . Operating income (loss) $ 25,000 *Allocated on the basis of program revenues