SCENARIO: You are a new hire for a major corporation completing your eight-week rotation relating to accounting, financial reporting, budgeting, cost control, and profit maximization. As part of your rotation you are learning how accounting information is used by managers throughout the organization to make managerial decisions. This report will address the below topics, providing senior management a report introducing, explaining, and providing analysis of the financial reports. Assume senior management does not understand basic accounting concepts and unable to read and interpret the reports without your assistance. Incorporate and explain accounting concepts learned within the course material (readings and discussions) and provide financial analysis as completed within the SEC10K discussion posts.
REQUIREMENT: Prepare a report for your chosen corporation’s senior managers to interpret and explain the SEC10K financial reports.
The report should be one to two full in pages in length: single spaced, 12 pt. font, one-inch margins, and in your own words.
Make note of the grading rubric which requires you to address project questions, display critical thinking, analysis, research, application of course concepts, write in your own words, and demonstrate a high degree of effective communication (i.e., formal business writing with proper grammar and punctuation).
The following are concepts you should consider for discussion within your report:
Compare and contrast financial accounting and managerial accounting.
Consider the concept of break even analysis and target income.
In order to apply break even analysis, why would the expenses reported in external financial reports need to be reorganized into categories based on cost behavior?
How do these analytical tools relate to product pricing and cost management (i.e., why would this analysis be useful to management)?
Why would a company seek to position their products as low priced or high priced item in the market place? How might this affect sales dollars, sales volume, and profits?
Search and review your course materials for pricing strategies. Search specifically for the word pricing. Summarize the concepts and issues from the course materials.
Explain the interrelationships with accounting, information systems, and sales, marketing, and profit planning.
ACCT 301 – Weekly Homework
The primary reading material source is http://www.principlesofaccounting.com/
(For additional information, use the OpenStax textbook available within LEO as a secondary resource.)
SCENARIO: You are a new hire for a major corporation completing your eight-week rotation related to accounting, financial reporting, budgeting, cost control, and profit maximization. As part of your rotation you are learning about the accounting process and how to use accounting information to make managerial decisions.
Read the assigned chapters to learn the accounting concepts, then submit a written report in the LEO assignment folder summarizing your knowledge of the week’s concepts.
You should create this report to provide documentation/evidence of your assigned chapter readings and self-assessment exercises (Fill in the Blanks, and Multiple Choice questions at end of each chapter). (A series of projects focused on your SEC10K corporation will be completed and submitted separately.)
REQUIREMENT: As described above, upon completion of the readings and quizzes (the week’s assigned chapters are detailed below) write a report as a Word document and upload it to this week’s Homework assignment folder. Summarize what you learned through your readings and practice quizzes. Demonstrate an understanding of the week’s concepts. The more detailed write ups documenting a solid understanding of the material will earn the highest homework points.
Week 7:
A. Read and complete the self-graded questions for ch 21 & 22 at http://www.principlesofaccounting.com/.
B. Provide a summary of the accounting concepts learned through the readings and practice quizzes for this week. Demonstrate your understanding of the week’s concepts. If you need ideas regarding topics to discuss, see ideas below. The more detailed your write-up documenting your understanding the higher it will be graded.
Complete the report below as a Word document and submit in the Assignment Folder for week 1 Homework.
Additionally, here are some topics to consider:
Why do companies budget? What are the benefits?
What can budgets be used for when evaluating company/department performance?
What topic(s) gave you trouble this week (if any)?/What topic(s) do you feel you were able to grasp? Post questions in the homework discussion thread!
The most important aspect of this write-up is to document your understanding of the week’s concepts.
Remember all submissions and postings in our class must be in your own words. Deliverables are to be single spaced with double spacing between paragraphs. These are business reports, thus proper spelling, grammar, and professional writing is expected. Your report submission serves as your new hire eight-week rotation report to your supervisor regarding the knowledge learned for this week’s material related to accounting and financial reporting.
Postings in this discussion focus on the concepts of managerial accounting including Break Even Analysis, Budgets, and other calculations. Some concepts may carry over from your Eoncomics courses. Cash is a key budget issue as you calculate expected cash receipts and cash disbursements. Break Even Analysis is actually related to profit planning!
Did you complete an economics course prior to ACCT 301? Did it help you as you considered topics on Managerial Accounting in our class?
