a report to management

Financial Accounting
Assignment Semester 1 2013

Background situation of simulation:
You are working in the Investment Advice section of the strategic planning department of a major organization. Your organisation is considering the Australian equities market.

Management have called a meeting of you and three of your colleagues, and during the meeting have discussed the effects of the legal need of public listed corporations to conform to the Australian Financial Reporting Standards. They have asked you and your colleagues to sample a selection of ASX listed companies, and establish the extent to which companies comply in detail with the spirit of the law. Management are curious about the compliance in regard to several particular areas of the Standards, in particular, leasing, equity section, Cash Flow Statements, Intangibles, Tax Effect Accounting, and Segment activities. Management however believe that as an indicator, only four of these need to be investigated.

Required:
Your assignment is to complete a report to management in this regard.
You are to form into groups of four for the submission of this assignment
Three weeks before due date, you may commence testing your assignment for originality (30%) on TURNITIN which will be available on WebCT/Blackboard.

You are to select one company from the ASX list of the top 100 companies.
You are then to obtain a copy of that company’s latest annual report and undertake four of the following analyses:

1. Examine the company’s Leasing, and analyse the nature of any finance leases, and any operating lease arrangements. In particular you are asked to ascertain if the information provided is in compliance with the relevant Accounting Standards.
2. Examine the owners’ equity section of the accounts and investigate if the data provided conforms with the relevant Accounting Standards.
3. Examine the company’s Cash Flow Statements and confirm that the information provided conforms with the relevant Accounting Standards.
4. Examine the treatment of intangible assets of all types and consider if the treatment conforms with the relevant Accounting Standards.
5. Examine the recording of Income Tax expense, benefits and obligations and consider if the recording meets the requirements of the relevant Accounting Standards.
6. Examine the recording of segment activities and consider if the recording meets the relevant Accounting Standards.
At the end of each section, consider what improvements to the relevant accounting standard may improve the useability and transparency of the data you have analysed.
You are however presenting ONE report covering the four points, and therefore need to properly integrate the four points into the report at the introduction and conclusion. This means you must justify why you chose the four points you did, and ignored the other two points. A short conclusion of your overall findings is expected by management.

Word Length: 4000 words.

Marking: This assignment is worth 20% and will be scored out of 20 marks. The assignment is a TEAM assignment and therefore scores will be applied to all members of a team without distinction.

Due Date: Friday week 10, 23-50pm

You have to submit TWO copies of your report:

• One copy should be submitted to Turnitin via a link on webct . The report should be submitted ONLY by one team member

• The second (hard copy) of the report should be submitted to your lecturer / tutor / assignment box.

Penalty for late assignments: 1 mark per working day (weekday).

Teamwork:

• It is YOUR responsibility to form teams, thus swapping contact details and arranging regular progress meetings is essential. Remember that, once a team is formed, it is up to you and your fellow team members to maintain team discipline.

You are encouraged to use Discussion board section in Blackboard/WebCT to allocate yourself in a group / invite members to your group.

• Team members can belong to different tutorial groups, but should be enrolled in one campus.

• Once a group is formed, all members need to sign up into their group through a link on Blackboard/WebCT. The link is located in Assessment folder.
• Any person signing up in a group needs to obtain approval from other group members PRIOR to signing up. In case there are complaints that a student signed up without prior approval from other group members, he/she will be removed from the group immediately. All complaints need to be submitted via email (using VU student email)

• Groups must assign a leader and keep all records of meetings and tasks assigned to group members. These records must be attached at the end of your report. Marks will be allocated for your meeting logs. A suggested meeting log is attached.

• Where a group member is not cooperating or contributing to the group, and the team has made all efforts to resolve the issue, the team must inform the tutor and unit coordinator/s immediately via email. Where a group does not report this matter immediately, it will not be entertained later on, especially before the due date of the assignment. The defaulting member will be given a warning and should the member continue to default, the group will continue without the defaulting member and the defaulting member will receive zero for the task.

Format and referencing

• A reference list must be included at the end of your report. Entries in the reference list should be sorted alphabetically by author and should conform to the Harvard style. (Please see VU library’s website for Harvard referencing style).

• You must acknowledge the originator of any intellectual output in work submitted for academic grading, even if you paraphrase someone else’s work. You must familiarise yourself with VU’s Academic Honesty and Preventing Plagiarism Policy before submitting your assignment: http://wcf.vu.edu.au/GovernancePolicy/PDF/POA040915000.PDF