What specific conclusions can be reached from Variances in the latest financial statements

The case asks you to put yourself in the shoes of Susan Jenkins, the CFO of a web applications company called Software Associates. Your boss, software Associates’ CEO, Richard Norton, is worried about the variances in the latest financial statements and has asked you to meet with him to discuss these. For purposes of our assignment, we will assume that rather than preparing for a meeting with Mr. Norton, you are preparing a memo to submit to him, addressing his questions. In the first paragraph of the case, Richard Norton has expressed a very concrete concern: “Why, with higher revenues, is our bottom line less than half of what we had budgeted?” Your assignment for the case is to write Mr. Norton a memo answering this question. Interspersed throughout the text’s case are five “Assignment Questions” each asking you to prepare a specific analysis. In your memo, you will include each analysis as an “exhibit” after the text of the memo. In the text of your memo, explain for each analysis: What the purpose of the analysis is What specific conclusions can be reached from evaluating the analysis What recommendations can be reached from these conclusions What additional questions are there that are not answered by the analysis How you would go about answering these questions. Finally, close your memo with a brief paragraph summarizing your answer to the question: ““Why, with higher revenues, is our bottom line less than half of what we had budgeted?” and with your recommendations on how to improve the situation.