Yaovi Akpawu operates Yaovi's Cricket Farm in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Yaovi's raises about 18 million crickets a month. Most are sold to pet stores at $12.60 for a box of 1,000 crickets. Pet stores sell the crickets for $0.05 to $0.10 each as live feed for reptiles. Raising crickets requires a two-step process: incubation and brooding. In the first process, incubation employees place cricket eggs on mounds of peat moss to hatch. In the second process, employees move the newly hatched crickets into large boxes filled with cardboard dividers. Depending on the desired size, the crickets spend approximately two weeks in brooding before being shipped to pet stores. In the brooding process, Yaovi's crickets consume about 16 tonnes of food and produce 12 tonnes of manure. Akpawu has invested $400,000 in the cricket farm, and he had hoped to earn a 24% annual rate of return, which works out to a 2% monthly return on his investment. After looking at the farm's bank balance, Akpawu fears he is not achieving this return. To get more accurate information on the farm's performance, Akpawu bought new accounting software that provides weighted-average process cost information. After Akpawu input the data, the software provided the following reports. However, Akpawu needs help interpreting these reports. Akpawu does know that a unit of production is a box of 1,000 crickets. For example, in June's report, the 7,000 physical units of beginning work in process inventory are 7,000 boxes (each one of the 7,000 boxes contains 1,000 immature crickets). The finished goods inventory is zero because the crickets ship out as soon as they reach the required size. Monthly operating expenses total $2,000 (in addition to the costs that follow).

Questions:

Yaovi Akpawu has the following questions about the farm's performance during June:

1. What is the cost per box of crickets sold? (hint: this is the cost of the boxes completed and shipped out of brooding)

2. What is the gross profit per box?

3. How much operating income did Yaovi's Cricket Farm make in June?

4. What is the return on Akpawu's investment of $400,000 for the month of June? (Compute this as June's operating income divded by Akpawu's $400,000 investment, expressed as a percentage)

5. What monthly operating income would provide 2% monthly rate of return? What price per box would Yaovi's Cricket Farm have had to charge in June to achieve a 2% monthly rate of return?

Yaovi's Cricket Farm Brooding Department Production Cost Report Month Ended June 30
				Equivalent Units
				Transferred In	Direct Material	Conversion Costs
		Flow of Production	Flow of Physical Units
		Unit to account for:
		Beginning work in process inventory June 1
		Transferred in during June	7,000
		Total units to account for	21,000
		Units accounted for:	28,000
		Completed & shipped out during June
		Ending work in process, June 30	19,000	19,000	19,000	19,000
		Total physical units accounted for	9,000	9,000	7,200	3,600
		Total equivalent units	28,000
				28,000	26,200	22,600
		Unit costs:					Total
		Beginning work in process June 1		$21,000	$39,940	$5020	$65,960
		Costs added during June		46,200	156,560	51,480	254,240
		Total costs to account for		$67,200	$196,500	$56,500	$320,200
		Divide by total equivalent units		(divided by) 28,000	(divided by) 26,200	(divided by) 22,600
		Cost per equivalent unit		$2.40	$7.50	$2.50
		Assignment of total cost:
		Units completed and shipped out during June		[19,000 x ($2.40 + $7.50 + $2.50)]	$235,600
		Ending Work in process, June 30:
		Transferred in costs		[9,000 x $2.40]	21,600
		Direct Materials		[7,200 x $7.50]	54,000
		Conversion Costs		[3,600 x $2.50]	9,000
		Total ending work in process, June 30			84,600
		Total cost accounted for			$320,200