Part of your job as an intern management accountant for Wagner Chocolates is to prepare a master budget, including all component budgets, for the first quarter of $2024.$ The company produces a single product, premium handcrafted candies which are sold by the dozen. The following information is given to you:

Sales forecast: Normal monthly sales are $700$ boxes, however sales typically drop to $500$ boxes in January due to New Years resolutions. Fortunately, February sales are expected to be double a normal month, thanks to Valentines Day. March sales are expected to be the normal $700$ boxes. The selling price of the chocolates is $$20$ per box $($one dozen chocolates$).$

Standard Costs: Each box of a dozen candies uses $1\mathrm{.}5$ pounds of the finest imported dark chocolate. Wagner purchases the chocolate for $$4$ per pound. Each box requires $15$ minutes $(\mathrm{.}25$ hours$)$ of direct labor. Wagner$$s employees are paid an average of $$20$ an hour $($including benefits.$)$ Variable factory overhead is allocated to the product at a rate of $$2$ per direct labor hour $(\mathrm{.}50$ per box.$)$ Fixed factory overhead is $$500$ per month.

Inventories: Wagner desires to have inventory of $300$ boxes of finished product at the end each month. Inventories are somewhat depleted after Christmas and the company will start January with only $60$ boxes of finished product on hand.

Wagner also desires to keep a substantial inventory of raw materials on hand. Ending raw material inventory desired is $400$ pounds of chocolate. Use this $400$ pounds as the desired ending inventory for each month. Beginning inventory on January $1$ is $160$ pounds of chocolate.

REQUIRED:

$1.$ Enter all of the information given to you in an excel spreadsheet. The given information should be well organized, properly labeled and formatted to print out on one page. This one page is the only place where you are allowed to enter numbers. Highlight the section that contains your given information in any color you choose.

Prepare the following budgets for the quarter using Microsoft Excel: