Juniper Berry Is a Private Company in the Niagara Region

question 58

Essay

Juniper Berry is a private company in the Niagara region that operates in the fruit and vegetable industry. In its main St. Catharines plant, it receives picked berries and sorts and packages them. It also makes some related products such as jams, cookies, and pies. Your firm has recently been hired as the auditor of Juniper Berry. The partner in charge of the audit has asked you to write a memo explaining why it is important to gain understanding of the business operations and processes of Juniper Berry and also to list some suggested procedures to be performed in the process of understanding the business operations and processes.
To assist you with your memo, the partner provided you with some notes she took at a recent meeting with the management of Juniper Berry:
- Juniper Berry (JB) sells and manufactures a wide range of products, including fresh and frozen berries, jam, cookies, and pies. Fresh and frozen berries make up most of JB's revenues.
- JB sells mostly to grocery stores directly. However, its frozen berries are packaged with the Mondo Grocers logo as they have an exclusive contract to sell all of their frozen berry production to Mondo.
- In 2011, JB installed a new scale system to weigh berries when they are delivered from various farms. The amount to be paid to the farmer is then calculated and recorded immediately. The system automatically records the inventory and issues an electronic payment for the amount calculated by the scale. JB is proud to be technologically advanced, as it has allowed the company to cut some jobs and be more cost efficient.
- Given that most of the packaging and processing of berries into derived products is automated, capital assets represent a significant portion of the balance sheet and also required JB to obtain a large bank loan in 2011 when the plant upgrade took place.

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