ACTG 310

Journal entries in the general ledger

general ledger

financial reports

transactions, journal (post), ledger (make corrections), trial balance (temporary adjustment accounts), reporting

detailed listing that that supports a “control account” (ex: A/R subsidiary ledger)

T Charts; debit, credit, or balance sheet

process of evaluating data with the purpose of drawing conclusions to address business questions.

Categorical data like group, rank, count

Simple Data like hair color

Numerical Data like age, height, $$

Defines 0 as “absence” of something($)

Where 0 is just another number (temperature)

show only whole numbers (points in a 🏀 game)

shows numbers with decimals (height)

describe the mean, median and stdev of the data

used to present findings aka financial results

are used to gain insights while you’re interacting with data such as identifying good vs bad customers

goal is to simplify concepts and processes; it is the idea illustration of processes or frameworks

goal is to affirm concepts and set context; traditional data visualizations

goal is to discover, simplify, learn; more compelx, undefined visualizations, used in working sessions for brain storming

goal is to spot trends, make sense, and deep analysis; make more complex, dynamic and interative visualizations— used in working sessions and testing.

comparisons: bar charts, pie charts, tree maps; for geographic use symbol maps, and test data use word clouds.

trend over time: line chart, outlier detection: box and whiskers, relationship between two variables: scatter plots and filled maps for geographical.

reveals the real increase and almost always easier to interpret than a pie

appropriate scales and using colors effectively

red and blue

explain what was being researched and what the purpose of the project is
M: if appropriate, describe issues you encountered in the ETL process
P& A: an overview of your model and the limitations you faced
C: explanation of the visual you chose and what/if something stands out
T: discuss what’s next in your analysis. how frequently will you update? trends or outliers we need to pay attention to?

• Placing the focus on them

• Craft different versions for different audience

• Use appropriate tone

• provide the right tone

• avoid TOO much yap

1. know ur audience

2. know ur message

3. think like a reporter

4. banish buzzwords and cliches

5. junk the jargon

6. keep it tight

7. make it plain and simple

8. leave the symbols and abbreviations

9. get active

10. proofread!!

It is an objective examination and evaluation of the financial statements to make sure that the financial records are a fair and accurate representation of the transactions they claim to represent.

internal auditor, compliance auditor, government auditor (auditor experiences can lead to forensics, consulting, and controller/CFO opportunities)

N: why we perform audit
E: how much can we test
T: how often the procedure should be run

a general overview of the basic data auditors will evaluate, including notable tables and fields.

summarize activity or master data on specific attributes

look for correlations or patterns of interest

help auditors discover hidden patterns linked to abnormal behavior

make recommendations based on past data

CAATS— computer assisted auditing techniques

with management to resolve those issues

results may appear in an audit dashboard and may be included in audit evidence

evaluate detection and resolution of expectations. Periodically evaluate the procedures for effectiveness

age analysis (group balances by data), sorting (identifies largest or smallest values), summary statistics (mean, median, min, mix, count, sum), samplin (random & monetary unit)

analysis of new accounts opened and sales employeee bonsues by employee and locations.

the likelihood of payment

smallest to largest

manual evaluation of source documents

relative size of a value to its population (mean, median, min, max, count and sum)

larger transactions such as cumulative balances

by calculating stnd distance from the mean (bw 1 and 3)

abnormal distributions of large numbers

identify individual employee avgs

it allows you to join tables on complete or partial values on at least one common attribute

shows only the records from both tables that match

shows only the records from the 1st table and only records that match

shows only records from the 2nd table and the ones that match

shows all non matching records

locating gaps or duplicate transcations

predicts specific dependent values based on independent variable inputs

predicts a category for a record

uses a rank score to evaluate the strength of classification

evaluates text for + or - sentiments to predict outcomes

decision support systems

predicts a specific outcome or class

uses observations of past actions to predict future actions for similar event

analysis determines procedures to follow when next accounts are opened for inactive customers such as requiring approval

judge things like likehood and probability

allows an auditor to predict a specific dependent value based on independent varibale inputs.

risk assesment can be either low or high risk

the strength of the class

enables evalution of test for distributions of words that maybe classified as + or - outcomes to look for potential bias.

taking past actions from auditors to predict the expected behavior in an unknown case

evaluate a company's financial statements and financial performance

ratio analysis

common size

ability to satisfy company’s ST obligations

are computation of a firms operating efficiency

helps assess a company’s ability to pay its debts and stay in business

provide info on the profitbability of a compnay and its pospects for the future

components of ROE

useful when you can make a comparison of ratios

example of predicitive analytics and can be used to calculate rends from 1 period to the next over time

(current year amount-base year amount)/base year amount

current year amount-base year amount

a change in a given year comapred to a common base year

sparklines, heatmaps and sunburst

the freuqency of words in unstructured data and matches those to sentiment dictionary

yes, they can and it will help them realize gains in the market (postive, negative, uncertain, litigious/mediate, modal/possible, and contraining/commit)

the higher the proportion of negetive words, the lower the retuens

XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is a type of XML (extensible markup language) used for organizing and defining financial elements

allows data to be quickly transmitted and recieved, and serves as an input for analytics models ysed by financial analysts, auditors, or regulators

to identify what they are and context in an instnace document

1) taxonomy
2) extensioin schema
3) financial statements
4) XBRL instance document
5) validate document

descriptive to compute the results of an initiative, diagnostic to compare those results to a benchmark (ex. budget), predictive to plan for future periods, and prescriptive to guide the controlling process

they are numbers used to evaluate and measure performance in a company including KPIs

what happened/is happening...you are not comparing them

why did it happen? can we explain why it happened?

will it happen in the future? is it foreseeable? what is the probability something will happen?
(use past data and predict the future)(regression)

what should we do based on what we expect will happen? how do we optimize our performance based on potential constraints?
(where do we go from here and what would be the impact in the future and set up a goal using goal seek analysis)

compares actual results to budgeted results to determine whether a variance is fav or unfav

they help identify the root causes of the variance (ex. the price we pay for RM or the inc. volume of sales) and drill-down to determine the good performance to replicate and the poor performance to eliminate