Best Practice in Finance and Accounting

Best Practice in Finance and Accounting

OBJECTIVES:

1. Perform all the steps of the accounting cycle in accordance with GAAP for service and merchandising businesses.
2. Prepare financial statements for sole proprietorships, partnerships, and corporations.
3. Calculate quantities and dollar amounts of merchandise inventory and cost of goods sold using GAAP and IRS methodologies.
4. Provide for uncollectible accounts receivable and calculate the estimated amount of accounts receivable that will ultimately be collected.
5. Calculate depreciation, depletion, and amortization and calculate the book value of plant and intangible assets.
6. Broadly describe the principles of internal control over assets and the accounting profession’s Code of Ethics.
7. Discuss the income tax consequences resulting from the use of alternate GAAP methodologies.
8. Describe the differences among cash, accrual, and other comprehensive bases of accounting.
9. Make calculations and prepare journal entries for various end of period adjustments.
10. Make calculations and prepare journal entries for the issuance and redemption of debt and equity securities by corporations.

Course Outline:

• Introduction/Accounting: Information & Decision Making
• Accounting: Information & Decision Making
• Basic Financial Statements
• The Accounting Cycle: Capturing Economic Events
• The Accounting Cycle: Accruals & Deferrals
• The Accounting Cycle: Reporting Financial Results
• Merchandising Activities
• Financial Assets
• Inventories and the Cost of Goods Sold
• Plant and Intangible Assets
• Liabilities
• Stockholders’ Equity: Paid-In Capital
• Income and Changes in Retained Earnings
• Statement of Cash Flows
• Financial Statement Analysis

Financial Statement Analysis:

• Identify the informational requirements of key user groups
• Calculate ratios in terms of -
• Study ratio relationships in order to -
• Brief an accountant on how best to undertake a financial analysis on your behalf (i.e., from your stakeholder point of view).

Capital Appraisal:

• The principles and objectives behind longer-term decision-making.
• The application of the key non-discounting and discounting capital budgeting techniques.
• The advantages of the discounting techniques over the non-discounting techniques.
• The practical issues surrounding the application of the net present value (NPV) and internal rate of return (IRR) techniques.
• The importance of post-completion audits of capital projects.

Budgetary Control- Planning and Decision Making

• Budgeting: Financial budgets and forecasts.
• Steps of proper budgeting Assumptions.
• Data collection.
• Budget formulation: Budget procedure.
• Types of budgets.
• Different kinds of budgeting methods, e.g. zero based, activity based.
• How to develop a budgeting methodology.
• How to evaluate the output from budget preparation.
• Budgetary control.
• Budget follow-up and reports: Performance review.
• Variance determination.
• Revisions of budgets and forecast.