THE COURSES: A variety of corporate adventures

Financial Accountability

COURSE SUMMARY and STORYLINE: Yet again, the smart-mouthed Ken Zylstra, is your training partner for this course and, this time, his carefree attitude will bump up against your immediate supervisor, Tsong Hua, Central’s hard-nosed accountant. Your assignment is simple. You will be asked to add up the company’s vending machine money. While the money made on chips and soda may seem insignificant in terms of Central’s revenue, the handling of the finances is no small matter. The machine's income goes toward a beneficiary fund for needy Central employees, but the lack of a system led to tremendous conflict last year. Setting up the system will push you to apply financial and managerial accounting concepts including: financial statements, journal entries, costing, budgeting, variance, and responsibility. What choices will you make as you apply Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP)? And, more importantly, will you and Ken be able to please all of the stakeholders?

(The objective of this course in financial accountability is to present students with the basic skills and terminology and then allow them to apply these skills in practical critical thinking exercises, decision situations and other higher levels of learning. Topics include both financial accounting concepts and managerial accounting concepts. The course begins with an understanding of the various financial statements and the basic accounting process. A more in-depth coverage of assets, liabilities, equities, revenues and expenses precedes a discussion of financial statement analysis. The course transitions into foundational managerial accounting concepts including cost behavior, budgets, performance evaluation, differential analysis and capital budgeting. This course has 15 modules.) Microsoft™ Excel® 2003 or 2007 is highly recommended for this course.