Dale,Smith,and Associates,a CPA Firm,is Trying to Determine the Hourly Cost

question 20

Essay

Dale,Smith,and Associates,a CPA firm,is trying to determine the hourly cost of its junior accountants in the auditing department.The following data have been gathered.
$\begin{array}{lc}\text { Monthly salaries for } 4 \text { juniors @ } @ 3,000 \text { each } & \$ 12,000 \\\text { Monthly auditing department overhead costs } & \$ 83,160 \\\text { Average number of hours worked each month } & 800 \mathrm{hr}\end{array}$
Assuming 40 percent of the monthly overhead costs for the auditing department are attributable to the junior accountants,compute the hourly cost of their services.

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Definitions:

Required Rate Of Return

The minimum annual percentage return an investor expects to achieve by investing in a particular asset.

Internal Rate Of Return

A metric used in capital budgeting to estimate the profitability of potential investments, calculated as the discount rate that makes the net present value of all cash flows from a particular project equal to zero.

Required Discount Rate

The minimum expected rate of return on an investment, used in the discounting process of present value calculations.