Panzero Bread is a major retailer of specialty sandwich items and baked goods. The following information represents

The auditor of Panzero Bread identifies the company as a client With high audit risk and has set the posting thresholds for individual accounts at 10% of overall financial statement materiality levels. The auditors have detected an overstatement of accounts receivable of $345,000. The misstatement is not a surprise to the auditors, as they have detected misstatements in this account in the past.
On a per share basis, the misstatement represents $0.01 of earnings per share. The auditor believes that the misstatement should be corrected. Management argues strongly that they prefer not to make the correction because they do not believe it is material; that is, the misstatement represents just over 1% of the account balance. Although left unsaid, the auditor knows that management is under considerable pressure from Wall Street to meet analyst expectations for earnings per share. Reducing earnings per share by even $0.01 would cause the trend in earnings to become even more negative than the unaudited financial numbers already reveal, and it would cause the company to just miss analyst forecasts for earnings per share.
a. Use the three common benchmarks for making materiality judgments (net income, total assets, and net sales) to establish materiality for the financial statements overall.
b. What difficulties does the auditor face when the alternative benchmarks yield differing conclusions about materiality? What qualitative factors should the auditor consider in making its materiality judgment in that case?
c. Articulate a reason for choosing one particular benchmark among the three calculated in part (a), and use that benchmark to calculate the posting (clearly trivial) threshold for the accounts receivable account.
d. What effect will the qualitative factors in this case have on the auditor's posting (clearly trivial) threshold for the accounts receivableaccount?

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12/31/14 unaudited) Total asses Accourts receivable Total salas Cost d goods sold Nat income Earnings per shore 12/31/13 audite d $542,609,000 $19,041 000 $828,971 000 $628,534,000 $58,849 000 asses $25,152,000 $1,066,691,000 $842,255,000 $57,456,000 $1.81 $1.88