ACCA Exam December 2010 (F7)
The primary and foremost work of a business accountant is – to deal with the business processes. Business accountant understands the language of business by recording, classifying, analyzing, and reporting the financial data. In fact, business organizations need to maintain the record of their money transactions. By virtue of having specialty in accounting, an accountant is the most suitable for this job.However, while accounting the business procedures, accountant needs to consider the type of business because every business is not alike rather it varies from one another. By applying the system of debits and credits, popularly known as double-entry accounting; accountant uses a general ledger to track the transactions of money (i.e. debit and credit) of the business proceedings. He records the data of every financial transaction on a balance sheet that gives a general overview of financial condition of the business.
Business accountant records and maintains the data of every financial transaction in such a manner that it balances the equation i.e. Assets = Liabilities + Owner’s Equity or capital.
Balance sheet of accounting comprises of assets and liabilities. While preparing a chart, an accountant makes a separate sheet and numbering schemes for the assets and liabilities. Assets include all those things that the respective company owns such as cash deposited in the bank account, company building, machinery, car, and many others (owned by the company). Apart from these physical assets, the rights and claims possess by the company are also assets such as patents, the exclusive right to make use of a trademark and goodwill from the acquisition of another company. These are commonly known as intangible assets.
On the other hand, the liabilities are the obligation of the company. Payable accounts (paying salary of the employees and paying tax are liabilities) and providing the quality services to the customers are liabilities.
Moreover, accountant needs to maintain the record of balance sheet consistently because the fundamental of accounting is contingent upon the periodic recording and reporting of financial data. It includes:
- Recording and maintenance of business transactions.
- Providing debits and credits to a general ledger.
- Ideal adjustments to the general ledger.
The Simpson Scholarship for ACCA Students
The Simpson ACCA Scholarship was initiated by Muriel Simpson, a Fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA).
Upon her death in 1977, Ms Simpson, through a will left her estate to ACCA to fund a scholarship program that allows aspiring accounting professionals who wish to get the certification benefit from the financial help it offers.
The scholarship is awarded to 5 ACCA Qualification students every year, which covers the examination and subscription fees for up to 5-year period. The recipients also get a complete set of ACCA academic materials from two official publishers, Kaplan Publishing and BPP Learning Media for each paper they are studying.
Strict qualification criteria awaits the applicant, in which students must achieve a minimum average mark of 66% in the Knowledge module for the ACCA examination to be eligible for selection. On top of that, each applicant also needs to submit a 1000-word long essay entitled, “How the Award of the Scholarship Will Help Me Realize My Full Potential”.
To find out if you are eligible and how to apply for the scholarship, please visit
http://www.accaglobal.com/scholarship/
The 2010 closing date for receipt of scholarship applications is Friday 7 May.
Copy Culture
MORE often than not our education does not reflect our ability. One reason that has contributed most to this state of affair is that we take recourse to unfair means while taking examinations and thus fail to comprehend the meaning of knowledge as well as of life. Those who take recourse to such ways they themselves suffer as well as make others, i.e. society, suffer ad infinitum. Because of this, merit suffers and because of that, the country suffers. The art of using unfair means at examinations in our country has quite developed over the years. All sorts of ploys are employed to leak question papers and seek answers to these questions.Though sometimes we feel happy because we get higher grade than others do, that does not reflect our ability. In practical life people tend to measure us on the basis of our abilities and expertise and not only on the basis of our certificates or status. Nowadays there are many unemployed graduates. Some of them have been jobless for more than five years. One possible reason to explain this situation is their lack of knowledge and expertise.
Generally speaking, most company managers will hire only such workers as would meet the company’s requirement, while others will be shown the door. The poor standard/quality of education in Sindh requires immediate measures to save our generation from being lost to the future. Thus it is necessary to adopt expedient and rational measures to bring about vital changes to the prevailing examination system.
First, we must discourage use of unfair means, commonly known as copy culture or cheating at examinations, and other ancillary matters. We must ensure that all examination centres /halls/rooms must be sealed off as far as outsiders are concerned. Moreover, supporters inside the examination centres should be tracked down and hauled up. Examinees should be thoroughly checked for carrying any guide books / solved papers and photo state copies.
Leaking out the contents of question papers in any form before or during an examination has also become a routine matter. For this the relevant authorities should frame the strictest possible law so that no one can dare leak any question paper.
Moreover, no electronic devices etc that can be helpful in cheating, except the calculator, should be allowed.
Also, the practice of changing seating arrangements and accommodating some candidates in special halls to facilitate them has also been noticed many a time. This must go. Moreover, allowing extra time to selected candidates and replacement of answer sheets/extra sheets to help candidates in cheating must be dealt with sternly.
Distortion of admission slips, interpolation therein and impersonation also go unpunished many a time. Verifying credibility of the invigilating staff before assigning them the task of examination has also remained as the lowest priority.
As there is at present no law to regulate the examination system and to stop the copy culture and cheating, a law must be made to include regulation of all examination centres throughout the province.
In this regard, being a member of the Sindh Assembly, I have introduced and submitted a bill called ‘The Elimination of Copy Culture/Cheating at Examinations’.
This bill aims at ensuring a fair and transparent examination system throughout the province. I earnestly request the Sindh chief minister and the education minister to take appropriate measures forthwith to curb the copy culture at examination and save our present and future generations.
HUMERA ALWANI
Member, Sindh Assembly
Thatta
A reader writes:
We have a Receptionist/HR Asst/Office Asst for our front desk. She does new hire packages, runs errands etc.
Pros: very efficient, proactive, creative, works well under pressure
Cons: horrible time management, ignores feedback
Facts of life: she's currently heavily pregnant, she has a very long commute and she's pretty young ( It's her first full-time position)
Issue: her time discipline has been an issue, even before her pregnancy announcement - for an hourly worker, she comes in late, has absenteeism issues, each errand run turns into a 2 hr trip - after every time we discuss it with her and give feedback, she does well for a few weeks and then its the same thing again.
The company had been toying with letting her go for a while now and while we are very happy with her work quality, she is expected to work 40 hrs a week. Between personal, health and weather issues, she has worked 1 day out of the last 7 working days. She's made plans to work right up to her delivery and plans to be back at work within 3 weeks of having the baby but given her absenteeism issues, we don't know if we can rely on that.
I personally will be affected if she's let go and knowing how hard it is to get efficient folks, I have been trying to see what options we could work out. Can I actually sit down with her and suggest that she consider taking time off for a while and come back once she's more settled? Or am I trying too hard? Should we just let her go and find someone else?
Yes, you are trying too hard. There are tons of good people out of work who would do a good job in this role and actually show up on a regular basis. You're letting her get away with bad behavior because you fear the hassle of finding a replacement, and you worry about what the replacement would be like, but this is one of those situations where once you do it, you'll be kicking yourself for having waited so long.
That said, I'm going to assume that she really does need to be in the office 40 hours a week every week (which is probably the case if she's the receptionist). But in these situations, it's always worth checking your premises to be sure, especially when you're happy with someone's work quality.
Anyway... Look, either she's required to be there reliably or she's not. You've talked to her about it repeatedly, she improves for a while, then she backslides, and you talk to her again and the cycle continues. Why? Because there are no consequences, which signals to her that it's not really as mandatory as you say it is. You're trying to persuade her and cajole her into meeting the requirements of the job, rather than treating them like, you know, requirements.
Use your authority. These situations are what it's there for.
This means that you sit her down and say: "Look, your job requires that you be here for 40 hours a week every week unless it's cleared in advance. It also requires you to be here on time every day. And we expect you to take 30 minutes for the type of errands you run, not two hours. These are requirements of the job, and they're not flexible. If you continue not to meet these requirements, we will need to let you go. This is the final warning you'll get."
I'm also a big fan of asking people, "Can you commit to meeting those requirements? Because if you don't want to or don't think it's the right fit for you, let's be realistic about this up-front and plan a transition that will work for both of us." Sometimes people are straight with you when you take this approach and will tell you it's not for them. And when they don't, well, it's not going to be much of a surprise to them when they end up getting fired for doing what you told them would get them fired.
However, the whole situation is complicated by the fact that she's pregnant. If you've let her get away with this behavior all along without addressing it in a serious way and then you fire her right before her due date, you risk it looking like you fired her because of the pregnancy, which is illegal. That wouldn't actually be a correct perception, but because you didn't address this head-on earlier, you're now in a situation where your motives could be suspect. And that sucks. And it's one of the reasons why it's always important to address any performance issue swiftly and directly, so that you don't find yourself in the situation you're now stuck in.
This doesn't mean you can't do anything about it until after her maternity leave -- you're allowed to fire people in protected legal classes as long as you have legitimate reasons to do so (i.e., ones that aren't based on their protected legal class but instead are about performance or whatever), but it does mean that you need to care more about documentation and doing it all correctly. So keep that in mind.
As for your actual question, about whether you should suggest that she take time off and come back when she's more settled: First, is that even realistic? Presumably you'll need to replace her in the meantime and can't hold the job open indefinitely. But more to the point, sure, if you have a rapport with her, feel free to point out that she's not acting like someone who wants to have a job that requires reliability, and she should think about whether that's right for her right now or not. But ultimately, as a manager, your responsibility is to take the steps I described above, regardless of whether or not you also have a heart-to-heart with her.
And keep in mind that you have an obligation not only to your company to take these steps, but also to other employees, who are probably growing increasingly frustrated that the company isn't doing anything about the flaky, unreliable assistant.
By the way, you have a lot of company in this boat. The reality is that most managers don't remove problem employees quickly enough -- because we're human, because we like to give people additional chances, and because we don’t like telling people that they're failing. I've been guilty of this myself; every good manager has been. But it's time to act.
A good litmus test for any manager out there struggling with a similar situation: Would you feel relieved if the person told you they were resigning? If so, that's a sign that you have a performance problem that you need to address in a serious way, right now.
Two of the world's biggest accounting firms are reigniting the dispute over the way that banks account for losses - raising doubts over the long-awaited convergence of global reporting standards.
Jim Quigley, global head of "Big Four" accounting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu has proposed that banks account for losses in two radically different ways, to meet the opposing demands of politicians and accountants.
He has told the Financial Times that he is an "advocate" of banks making loan loss provisions for "incurred losses" separately from "expected losses" - and reporting them in two different lines in their accounts.
However, PwC, the world's largest accounting firm, has previously criticised a similar proposal, saying it would "muddy the waters".
Mr Quigley's proposal comes as accountants are grappling with politicians and regulators over how banks make provision for their losses, in the wake of the financial crisis. The lack of consensus threatens agreement on a global set of accounting standards by mid 2011 - an aim of the group of 20 nations - and follows disputes over the use of fair value or mark-to-market accounting, experts say.
Politicians and regulators have blamed the current system of "incurred losses" - whereby companies may make provision for loan losses only as they occur - for exacerbating the crisis, by encouraging a cyclical approach to risk management.
But that view is questioned by many accountants and bankers who say that "incurred losses" give investors clarity. Accountants and bankers are also are sceptical about the "expected loss" model, as they fear it raises the risk of "cookie jar" accounting, whereby executives put funds aside during good years only to release them later to cover up bad performance.
Mr Quigley said he believed that "one way we can bridge some of the current conflicts in financial reporting is with transparency". "The two-line idea accomplishes that transparency objective," he told the FT. However, PwC, has said it is opposed to putting two lines in the income statement.
The debate over the use of "expected losses" centres on whether banks should judge their provisioning over a matter of months, or over the life cycle of the loan - and whether the provisions should be taken through profit and loss.
How famous companies were named?
Yahoo!
The word was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book Gulliver's Travels. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and action and is barely human. Yahoo! founders Jerry Yang and David Filo selected the name because they considered themselves yahoos.
Xerox
The Greek root "xer" means dry. The inventor, Chestor Carlson , named his product Xerox as it was dry copying, markedly different from the then prevailing wet copying.
Sun Microsystems
Founded by four Stanford University buddies, Sun is the acronym for Stanford University Network
Sony
From the Latin word 'sonus' meaning sound, and 'sonny' a slang used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster.
SAP
"Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing", formed by four ex-IBM employees who used to work in the 'Systems/Application s/Projects' group of IBM.
Red Hat
Company founder Marc Ewing was given the Cornell lacrosse team cap (with red and white stripes) while at college by his grandfather. He lost it and had to search for it desperately. The manual of the beta version of Red Hat Linux had an appeal to readers to return his Red Hat if found by anyone!
Oracle
Larry Ellison and Bob Oats were working on a consulting project for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The code name for the project was called Oracle (the CIA saw this as the system to give answers to all questions or something such).
Motorola
Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company started manufacturing radios for cars. The popular radio company at the time was called Victrola.
Microsoft
It was coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the '-' was removed later on.
Lotus
Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from the lotus position or 'padmasana.' Kapor used to be a teacher of Transcendental Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Intel
Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name their new company ' Moore Noyce' but that was already trademarked by a hotel chain, so they had to settle for an acronym of INTegrated ELectronics.
Hewlett-Packard
Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett.
Hotmail
Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing email via the web from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in 'mail' and finally settled for Hotmail as it included the letters "html" - the programming language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective upper casings.
Google
The name started as a jockey boast about the amount of information the search-engine would be able to search. It was originally named 'Googol', a word for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. After founders - Stanford graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page presented their project to an angel investor, they received a cheque made out to 'Google
Cisco
The name is not an acronym but an abbreviation of San Francisco . The company's logo reflects its San Francisco name heritage.. It represents a stylized Golden Gate Bridge .
Apple Computers
Favourite fruit of founder Steve Jobs. He was three months late in filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company Apple Computers if the other colleagues didn't suggest a better name by 5 o'clock.
Apache
It got its name because its founders got started by applying patches to code written for NCSA's httpd daemon. The result was 'A PAtCHy' server - thus, the name Apache.
Adobe
The name came from the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the house of founder John Warnock.
