Course Outline 2015 ACCTG 211: FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING (15 POINTS) Semester 1 (1153) Course Prescription The study of financial accounting principles within New Zealand, to enable students to: (i) understand how they are developed and influenced; (ii) understand and apply selected New Zealand Equivalents to International Financial Reporting Standards (NZ IFRSs); (iii) report the results of complex business structures involving multiple entities. Completing students will understand the role financial statements play in investment, analysis and contracting decisions, providing a base for advanced study and supporting other areas, particularly finance. Programme and Course Advice Prerequisite: ACCTG 102 or 192 Goals of the Course To learn to read and understand the structure NZ IFRSs. To apply the requirements of selected NZ IFRSs, prepare financial statements and understand the effects of selected NZ IFRSs on financial statements. Learning Outcomes Detailed learning outcomes, for each of the six topics, are provided in the lectures slides. Content Outline Week 1-2 Accounting for cash flows Week 3-6 Accounting for equity interests in other entities Week 7 Accounting for debentures/bonds and events after the reporting period Weeks 8-9 Accounting for property, plant and equipment and intangible assets Weeks 10-11 Accounting for leases Weeks 12 The international accounting environment Learning and Teaching Office hours: Office hours will operate from week 2 of the semester and the times will be announced on Cecil. Help provided via Piazza: Piazza is an online platform that facilitates interaction among students and instructors in an efficient and intuitive manner. Piazza is highly catered to getting help fast and efficiently from classmates, the teaching staff and course coordinator. Rather than emailing questions to the teaching staff post your questions on Piazza. There is a link on Cecil for Piazza. Use Piazza to ask questions about the course outline, about assignments, about lecture material etc. There are folders set up on Piazza for each of the six topics, for each tutorial and for each assignment. You can also use the search function to find particular topics and questions and answers. Chris Clarke will contribute to the course administration type queries and the Topic 1, 2, 5 and 6 related queries. David Lau will contribute to the Topic 3 and 4 related queries. Lectures and Tutorials: The lectures commence in Week 1; there are three one-hour lectures each teaching week. Lecture materials per topic will be posted on Cecil in advance of the lecture. You are expected to download the materials and bring them along to the lectures. Please arrive on time as it disrupts the lecture if you are late. There are lecture recordings but technical errors may result in the lecture not being recorded. It is your responsibility to obtain the missed lecture materials from another ACCTG 211 student. Tutorials commence in Week 1 and there will be a ten tutorial sessions in total; no tutorials held in Week 5 (because of Easter Friday) or Week 7 (because of the test). In the tutorials questions will be worked through in detail. You are encouraged to participate and ask questions to increase your understanding of the material covered. Note that only brief solutions to these questions will be available on Cecil. To quote an A+ student “Felt students who did not attend tutorials were at a major disadvantage”. Inclusive Learning: Students are urged to discuss privately any impairment-related requirements face-to-face and/or in written form with the course coordinator. Student Feedback: General comments: -I found ACCTG 211 both challenging yet intellectually stimulating, and it ultimately increased both my knowledge of and interest in Accounting (top student Semester 2) -This course was very good because it was well structured and it made sense and everything was logical. Reasons were provided when doing examples which was good because accounting can’t just be memorized, I think it’s important to understand the concepts and the whole picture, for example why something gets debited or credited is important or why something was offset or eliminated in Topic 2. This Acctg paper is the best stage 2 paper as long as you keep up to date or even if you did not then go through the content and examples and you will understand everything! Lectures and lecture recordings: - Yes I take part in all lectures. I also always used lecture recording because English is not my first language so I struggle to speak and listen to English. I couldn't understand all in a lecture so I used a lecture recording as my supporting material. Student Feedback continued… -I attended the majority of the lectures. I also made use of the lecture recordings, as they were very useful in solidifying my understanding of the more complex concepts, noting down anything that I may have missed in the lectures, as well as revising for the test and the exam. I actually enjoyed all of the topics, but Topic 2 was my favourite, as I found it to be both the most interesting and challenging topic, from which I learned the most. I also thoroughly enjoyed Topics 3 and 4 as I had also enjoyed these topics from ACCTG 102, and the concepts covered in ACCTG 211 enabled me to deepen my understandings of said topics Piazza comments: - I thought Piazza was especially useful before the exam, where I consistently had the course page open in a tab in order to regularly check for updates. It was a useful tool when I was unable to make it to office hours. Furthermore, a lot of the questions asked by other students were very useful in helping me to revise, and in clarifying the more difficult concepts. I believe that many students would have benefitted from using Piazza (Top student Semester 2) - I found it useful to see other questions that I (a) had wanted to ask (b) hadn't even though about. -I never felt it (office/clinic hours) were necessary as the help you provided on Piazza was sufficient -I found Piazza was really helpful. Students can discuss what they don't understand properly and ask questions to lecturers. Piazza is like a 3rd teacher. Tutorials: -I found these really necessary in order to complete the assignments and also for the exam. -I missed one tutorial before the test which turned out to be a mistake as I made some silly errors that I probably could have avoided. -Very good. Having the process explained from the beginning to end for every topic was very useful. I tended to do the work prior to the tut and figure out when and how I went wrong -I felt that attending the tutorials truly helped me to better comprehend all of the concepts that we covered in the lectures. The recapitulations of key points covered in class were incredibly useful. I also tried to prepare answers for the tutorials beforehand, which enabled me to see what I had missed and things that I need to focus on in the future in order to improve. Hardest/Most challenging topic: -Business combinations (Topic 2) is probably the hardest topic I've done in accounting so far, so having the lecture recordings to go over material (worksheets/examples) again was really useful. -Found Topic 2 quite challenging initially and didn't really understand it first time around during lectures. However, once I sat down and went over the slides and examples second time, it made sense and I got the hang of it. The negative feedback was consistent: Topic 5 Accounting for Leases -This topic was rushed/quite challenging due to the time constraints Change for 2015: This topic will be spread over more lectures. PeerWise -I found that it wasn't a great resource compared to notes/examples. -It's a useful tool if everyone participated correctly, however I'm not exaggerating when I say that at least one third of all questions I answered had something wrong with them because Student Feedback continued… people were lazy and merely posted questions they read from the slides without trying to understand the content first, and I'm lucky that I understood the content well enough to understand what they were trying to say. Change for 2015: PeerWise will no longer be part of the assessment Teaching Staff Chris Clarke (CC) - Course coordinator, Lecturer for Topics 1, 2, 5 and 6 and taking tutorials: Room 260:561 [email protected] David Lau (DL) - Lecturer for Topics 3 and 4 and taking tutorials [email protected] Texts for Readings Financial Accounting: Accounting 211 – Custom Book, Pearson New Zealand, Edition 1. This text consists of selected chapters from four textbooks i.e. a compiled textbook. It is available from the University Bookshop and copies are available in Short Loan. The main purpose of the readings is to widen your understanding of the topics covered in lectures and provide more examples and explanations. New Zealand Equivalents to International Financial Reporting Standards (NZ IFRS). These standards can also be downloaded (for free) individually from www.xrb.govt.nz. Cheating/Plagiarism The University of Auckland will not tolerate cheating, or assisting others to cheat, and views cheating (a form of plagiarism) in coursework as a serious academic matter. The work that a student submits for grading must be the student’s own work, reflecting his or her learning. Work can be plagiarised from many sources, including books, journal articles, the internet and other students’ assignments. A student’s assessed work may be reviewed against electronic source material using computerised detection mechanisms. Upon reasonable request, students may be required to provide an electronic version of their work for computerised review. Assessment Five individual assignments Mid-semester Test (1.5 hours) Final examination (3 hours) Learning Outcomes Multiple – refer to each of the six topics 15% 20% 65% Assignments Semester Test Final Examination x x x