Copyright © by Mark Baker 1997

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 You have now created your spreadsheet, to model the finances of the school production. You will use it to answer these questions.  Read the questions very carefully and try to be as accurate as you can.

 Write your answers in your book.

1. What would the balance be if they managed to sell 10 adverts instead of 5? -£41

2. What would the balance be if they managed to sell an extra 20 tickets on Friday? -£37

3. What would the balance be if they sold 200 drinks instead of just 100? -£71

4. What would the balance be if the school only spent 50p (entered as 0.50) per person for refreshments, instead of 80p? £5

5. The head does not want the production to make a loss and suggests to you that one of the following actions be taken (the teachers are too busy to do all four):

• Much more effort be spent trying to get local businesses to advertise in the program.
• More should be done to advertise the performance on Friday, which often gets a much smaller audience than Saturday.
• The interval could be made longer to try and sell more drinks.
• The people doing the refreshments should look at ways of providing the food and drink more cheaply.

Write a paragraph to explain which one you think would be the most useful. Also, you should explain why you think that the other 3 ideas are not such a good idea. Write down the arguments that you would use to persuade the head that you have made the best choice. Use your answers to Q1-4 to back up your arguments.

In the end, the head decided that if the production lost less than £100, then that would be alright, so all the figures were left alone. Everyone started to work hard on the performance and getting the stage ready.

6. The company that provided the seating agreed that if the school caretaker helped to put it up and take it down, then they would take £50 off their price. Change the spreadsheet and write down what the total of the fixed costs is now. £1010

7. The props team managed to get everything that they needed for £67 and only £55 was spent on paint and materials. Costumes reused some clothing from the last production and only spent £160. Change the spreadsheet and write down the new balance. £17

8. The make-up team have spent all their money. However, they want to use some special face paints and they want another £15 to spend. They come to see you to ask for the money. What do you say to them? Say what you have decided and explain your reasons.

9. There are 2 weeks to go to the production. So far, only 90 tickets have been sold for Friday and 130 for Saturday. Enter these numbers. The lighting team would like to hire an extra ultra-violet light, for some special effects. This will cost another £50. What do you say to them? Justify your decision, explaining why you think they can/cannot have the extra money.

10. At the moment, the production looks like it is going to make quite a large loss. What can you do about it? Use the spreadsheet to try out your ideas. Decide what you think should be done and write out a brief report for the head. This should list your recommendations and justify why you think they should be done.

11. In the end, ticket sales for the Friday reached 130, but on Saturday the weather was really bad and only 145 people turned up. Hot drinks sold well and 120 were sold. However, because of the lower than expected numbers, only 112 programs were sold. There were 7 adverts sold. The refreshments ended up costing 85p per person because the refreshments team over-spent. Enter all these new numbers into the spreadsheet and write down the final profit/loss. -£113.25

12. You have a meeting with the head afterwards to review the costs of the production. Do you think that the head will be pleased or not? Explain your answer.

13. What do you think could be done next year to make sure that the production makes a profit?

14. If you could make a profit of £300 next year, you could afford to buy a new piece of equipment for the school’s sound system. Using this year’s final figures for everything else, what would ticket prices have to be in order to make a £300 profit? £5.01

15. If you raised the ticket prices to this amount, what effect do you think that this would have on the number of tickets sold?

16. Are there any better ways of trying to make the £300 profit, other than just increasing the ticket prices? Explain your ideas.

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