Finance and Accounting Access/Excel

Tiger Paw Holdings LLC

Case Information

All business organizations share some common structure. To run any business, you need technological support. It starts out as simple as abacus, pencils and paper and blossoms into modern 3D Cad Systems, smartphones, tablets, distributed processing linked databases, cloud computing and augmented reality.

It is our responsibility as managers to determine the most effective tools we should use for our organization, and supply chain communications. To be able to do that we need to understand the hardware, software, systems, personnel and how to manage these resources. Whether we are talking about retail, designer, or manufacturing companies they all have these business functions that we need to understand to be successful in our careers.

This case is going to deal with Finance and Accounting, their role within the organization and the technology used to support them. Our hypothetical company is going to continue to be Tiger Paw Holdings LLC.

What happens within the Finance and Accounting Departments? The Finance Department takes the more global approach to the company. What are the overall goals, assets, liabilities and owner’s equity in the company? What are the financial needs of the company and how are we going to make sure the company has the cash that it needs to run operations on a timely basis at the lowest possible cost to the company?

The Accounting Department on the other hand must track all the transactions that occur within the company and consolidate the data for the Finance Department to review. Everything that happens on a day to day basis must be recorded, summarized and then analyzed to make sure we are meeting those company objectives.

It is essential therefore that these departments work hand in hand for a company to be successful. Small companies will use accounting software like Intuit’s Quick Books to set up their accounts and perform their day to day transactions. The software has built in capability to prepare financial statements based on those transactions. Usually small firms will have an outside accountant who has a CPA rating (Certified Public Accountant) review the transactions to make sure the data is being reported correctly, and point out any areas that should be under more scrutiny by the owners and managers of the business.

Larger businesses will have separate Accounting and Finance departments. They will also be audited by an outside agency to make sure they are in compliance with all legal and ethical requirements and report any areas of concern to the management of the company and in their statement to shareholders which they are required to prepare on the financial health of the company.

The Accounting Department for this company is required to maintain a file on computer software licenses for the software the company uses.

Database Assignment Requirements

1. Open your previous file for Tiger Paws, or create a new file. We need to create a new Table- Software Vendors.

2. In this table, we need the following fields: Name of vendor, name of software, contact name, telephone number, e-mail address, number of licenses, date of installation, last update date, next scheduled update, cost of each license, primary function, host server, company logo of the software vendor. Adjust the field properties for these fields.

3. Enter 5 different software programs that could be used by companies in our industry for different parts of their business. Use real names and companies. Do not worry about the real cost of licenses. Host servers are the computers where the software is stored. They may be on or off premises. Some companies use names, others numbers for these computers. The important thing is that it allows us to quickly find the software and make corrections when necessary.

4. Create a query that would show us all the names of the software, contact name, number of licenses and host server. Sort the data by the name of the software in ascending order.

5. Create a query that will show us which software is due for an update after 1/1/2018, or was purchased before 3/1/2009?

6. Create a query that includes a calculated field that will show us the license cost for each software, the vendor name, logo, and primary function. In datasheet view we need to see the total cost of all licenses for the company.

Creating a calculated field: See the tutorial in the Reference Materials.

7. Create a report using the Report Wizard for the query created in step 6. Make sure the logo is properly adjusted and is no larger than 1 inch tall on the report so we can include all the data on one screen.

Excel Assignment Requirements:

1. Excel- The Income Statement is a separate file that you need to retrieve and complete. It is not dependent on the Access file.

Technology

Human Resources

Marketing and Sales

Finance and Accounting

Operations / Manufacturing

Distribution / Logistics

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