Accounting Project

First, the vast majority of your information should come directly from the company's annual report. If information will come from an outside source, I will indicate that below. Now, let me provide some specific hints for certain questions and/or sections.

Question 3: You can find the company's fiscal year end by looking at the date listed on the balance sheet.

Question 4: You can obtain this information by reading Management's Discussion & Analysis (MD&A) in the annual report.

Question 5, 8, 9, and 10: You can feel free to use a site such as MSN Money or Yahoo Finance to obtain this information.

Questions 16 through 23: Your answers to these questions should be thorough and should come directly from the statement of cash flows. If you locate the company's statement of cash flows within their annual report, you should be able to easily address each of these questions.

Questions 24 through 26: Companies will present some sort of equity statement along with the balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows. It can have a variety of names. It may be called a statement of retained earnings, statement of stockholders' equity, statement of changes in shareholders' equity, or something else along those lines. Find this statement, and you can easily answer questions 24 through 26.

Questions 27 through 30: Look at the equity section on the face of the balance sheet.

Questions 31 through 39: The footnote disclosures are the narratives directly following the four consolidated financial statements. Most companies will have at least 15 to 20 "notes." They will generally be labeled: "Note 1," "Note 2," etc. Find this section of the annual report, and you should be able to address each question.

Questions 40 through 46: Be sure that you locate the report from the independent accounting firm. The independent auditors are not the same thing as the audit committee. There will be a specific report within the annual report that will constitute the report of the independent auditors. It will specifically explain their responsibilities and conclusions. It will be signed by the firm at the bottom of the page.

Questions 50 through 52: ***This is very important.*** The Excel portion of the assignment is a very substantial portion of the overall project. Failure to submit the Excel portion of the project will result in an automatic 25% penalty.

Question 50: An example of a common-size balance sheet is presented in Exhibit 17.8 on page 694 of your textbook.

An example of a common-size income statement is presented in Exhibit 17.9 on page 695 of your textbook.

Question 51: An example of horizontal analysis on a balance sheet is presented in Exhibit 17.1 on page 690 of your textbook.

An example of horizontal analysis on an income statement is presented in Exhibit 17.2 on page 691 of your textbook.

Question 52: On page 699, they begin presenting liquidity, solvency, and profitability ratios beginning with accounts receivable turnover on page 699 and ending with return on common stockholders' equity on page 703. In your textbook, they provide the formula for each ratio. With the financial statements in your annual report, you should be able to plug in the numbers from the statements to solve each ratio for your specific company. If the formula asks for an "average" figure such as "average inventory," you'll take the prior year balance plus the current year balance and divide by 2 in order to arrive at a simple average.

Questions 53 through 55: Your answers in this section should be complete and thorough. Two or three sentences would not be enough to adequately support your position and/or earn full credit for the question. Plan to support your position based on specific findings and analytics that you've performed throughout the project.

Finally, remember that this project is a significant component of your overall grade in the course. You want to do your best. Keep in mind that the University has a very strict "no late-work policy" for this particular project. Late projects are not accepted for any reason. Therefore, it's very important to manage your time and plan accordingly.

I hope that everyone enjoys researching and learning more about your chosen companies. I'm looking forward to reading some interesting reports! :-)

Prof Brandy