Assessment 1 Instructions: Training—Accounting Tools And Practices

Develop either a training deck (12-15 slides) or training manual (3-4 pages) to ensure new hires have a solid understanding of income statements, balance sheets, and the elements that go into them.

Introduction

This portfolio work project will help you to not only better understand commonly used accounting tools, but it will also give you the opportunity to use your skills and experience by preparing training materials to train someone else.

Scenario

You work for an organization that is seeking growth and recently has hired new district managers to assist in this growth. In talking to other regional managers, you have heard that some district managers do not have a thorough understanding of commonly used accounting tools including an income statement and balance sheet. You have a new district manager hire, John, and see the need to do some training with him so he has a solid understanding of income statements, balance sheets, and the elements that go into them, including advertising costs, Web development costs, and store opening costs.

In preparing to train your new hire, you have determined that the use of examples (a picture is worth a thousand words) can be a great approach to use. So you have decided to gather some examples from the company’s summary of significant accounting policies from its latest financial statements.

You may apply this scenario to either Option 1 or Option 2, described in Requirements below.

Your Role

You are a regional manager for Urban Outfitters or your selected organization and oversee a number of districts. You have recently brought a new district manager on board and want to ensure he has the knowledge and tools needed to effectively do his job.

Requirements

Option 1:

The organization you work for is Urban Outfitters. Use the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission website to find the Urban Outfitter’s 2016–2017 financial statement’s summary of significant accounting policies. Look at the data for 2015, 2016, and 2017 for the following examples of essential elements you need to cover with John and ensure his understanding.

• Advertising. Examine the criteria used to expense and capitalize advertising costs and where these costs appear in the financial statement.
• Store opening costs. Examine how store opening and organization costs were handled and where these costs appear in the financial statement.
• Website development costs.Examine the approaches taken during the application and infrastructure development stage and the planning and operating stage.

Option 2:

Use a firm or scenario of your choosing.

Before choosing a company, read the assessment thoroughly to ensure:

• The company fits the assessment requirements.
• You have access to the financial statement’s summary of significant accounting policies and the Note disclosures from which you are drawing your materials. Include this information in the appendix for reference.
• You can distribute the data without disclosing confidential company information.

Training Materials

As you prepare your training materials for John, use the examples you collected from the company’s Notes to financial documents to illustrate how you address the following items:

• Explain how one or more of the following costs are captured:
  • Advertising.
  • Store opening. If store opening costs were capitalized, over what time period would you amortize them? Explain why you selected this time period.
  • Website development.
• Analyze the importance of Notes to financial statements in interpreting financial statements.
• Explain how the accounting method the company uses affects the financial statements.
• Explain how the financial statements would differ if another method were used to capture the costs.
• If you have a preference for capitalizing or expensing these costs, explain why it is your preference.

Deliverable Format

Leadership has asked that you develop either a training deck or a training manual that you will use with John and that can be deployed with other new hires as well. Regardless of the format selected, the information should address the points identified above and with detailed explanations within the notes areas of slides or within the training manual text. It will also be helpful to include information in regard to why each item is important to the organization as well as the success of the new district manager.

To use your time and John’s time wisely, be conscientious about providing thorough yet concise information. These materials are expected to be used by others for future training needs, so make sure they are well organized and clear.

Training materials requirements:

• 12–15 slides for a training deck. Include additional details as slide notes.
• 3–4 pages for a training manual.

Related company standards for either format:

• The training manual is a professional document and should therefore follow the corresponding MBA Academic and Professional Document Guidelines, including single-spaced paragraphs.
  • To learn more about creating presentations, click “MBA Program Resources” and then “Presentation Skills.”
• In addition to the training deck or manual materials, include:
  • Title (slide or page).
  • References (slide or page).
  • Appendix with supporting materials. If you are using a firm or scenario of your choosing, ensure faculty has sufficient information to understand how you reached your recommendation.
• At least two APA-formatted references.

Evaluation

By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies through corresponding scoring guide criteria:

• Competency 1: Explain how accounting concepts and practices impact financial reporting.
  • Explain how the accounting method the company used affects the financial statements.
  • Compare how two accounting methods differ in their effects on the financial statements.
• Competency 4: Communicate financial information with multiple stakeholders.
  • Communicate accounting information clearly.

Faculty will use the scoring guide to review your deliverable as if they were your immediate supervisor. Review the scoring guide prior to developing and submitting your assessment.

ePortfolio

This portfolio work project demonstrates your competency in applying knowledge and skills required of an MBA learner in the workplace. Include this in your personal ePortfolio.

Note: Faculty may also use the Writing Feedback Tool to provide feedback on your writing. In the tool, click the linked resources for helpful writing information.

Software skills: Web browser software and presentation software

Business skills: Employee productivity analysis 

In this project, you’ll suggest applications of Internet technology to help  employees at real-world company work more efficiently. 

Dirt Bikes’s management is concerned about how much money is being spent communicating with people inside and outside the company and on obtaining information about developments in the motorcycle industry and the global economy. You have been asked to investigate how Internet tools and technology could be used to help Dirt Bikes employees communicate and obtain information more efficiently. Dirt Bikes provides Internet access to all its employees who use desktop computers. 

· How could the various Internet tools help employees at Dirt Bikes? Create a matrix showing what types of employees and business functions would benefit from using each type of tool and why.

· How could Dirt Bikes benefit from intranets for its sales and marketing, human resources, and manufacturing and production departments? Select one of these departments and describe the kind of information that could be provided by an intranet for that department. How could this intranet increase efficiency and productivity for that department?

Use electronic presentation software to summarize your findings for management. 

Imagine that you are a crime analyst. You will be creating a geographic crime map that spans three years of crime data.

You will create a CSV file, using an excel document, saved as a CSV file. To build the CSV file you will need to do the following:

1. Go to the LexisNexis Community Crime Map site: http://communitycrimemap.com/
2. Choose a crime you would like to search. (e.g., theft, robbery, arson).
3. Select a geographic area that has 5-10 instances of the specific crime you selected, which occurred in each of the 3 years preceding last year (e.g., if you are taking this course in 2018, then you would search for the specific crime in 2014, 2015, and 2016). NOTE: you want to use a geographic area with a small data set, e.g., a city of a million or more people would likely have a large data set.
4. Identify 5-10 instances of the crime for each of the 3 years. Click on the icon of the crime incident to ascertain the crime data. For a tutorial on using the crime map, watch the video from the Madison Police department explaining its use: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c09YubbaD8&feature=youtu.be
5. Using the excel spreadsheet that you will save as a CSV file, create the following columns and input your crime data you have gathered from the crime map:

• IR number (“ID” in CSV file)
• Name of Crime (“class” in CSV file)
• The date and time the crime occurred (“Events time” in CSV file). You must enter the date and time in the following format: yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss
• Latitude of crime location (“Point y” in CSV file)
• Longitude of crime location (“Point x” in the CSV file)

NOTE: Access the “How to find Latitude and Longitude” document in the Topic 5 Topic Materials as a resource for this assignment.

Conduct analysis on the geographic data using the techniques from the assigned readings. Write a 750-1,000-word summary on the analysis of the data.

Be sure to cite three to five relevant scholarly sources in support of your content.

Utilize the Hunchlab website as a resource for the Topic 5 assignments.

URL:https://www.hunchlab.com/ 

Utilize the ArcGIS website as a resource for the Topic 5 assignments.

URL:http://www.esri.com/arcgis/about-arcgis 

Utilize the Maptitude website as a resource for the Topic 5 assignments.

URL:https://www.caliper.com/maptitude/crime/default.htm