You are planning to open a homeless shelter called Helping Hands Mission Inc. in fiscal year (FY) 2011. You expect to have 60 beds and to operate at full capacity throughout the year. You expect food to cost $25 per person per week and laundry to cost $10 per person per week. You plan to pay one full-time staffer an annual salary of $40,000 plus $10,000 in benefits, and a second part-time staffer an annual salary of $20,000. You plan to pay all of the aforementioned costs promptly as they are incurred. You expect to pay $5,000 per month to rent a furnished space and $2,000 per year for insurance; rent is due on the first day of each month and the full insurance payment is due on the first day of the year.

The city has agreed to reimburse you for $40 per person per week; you will receive weekly checks from the city with a four-week lag (i.e. four weeks after service has been delivered). You also expect to receive $80,000 in contributions, spread evenly throughout the year. You are not planning to borrow or invest any funds during the shelter's first year of operations.  

a)  Using the template on the course website, prepare an annual operating budget for FY 2011 on the accrual basis of accounting. 

b)  Prepare a quarterly cash budget for the shelter for FY 2011. (Hint: assume that there are 3 months or 13 weeks in a quarter. Do not try to convert weeks to months or vice versa!)

c)  Write a few sentences explaining which factor(s) are driving the difference between the shelter's expected  profit/loss  on the operating budget and annual  ending cash balance on the cash budget.

d)  Write a few sentences explaining some ways in which you might want to revise your plans for fiscal year 2011 in light of the shelter's expected profit/loss and ending cash balance.