Instructor’s Manual Accounting and Finance for Non-Specialists Seventh Edition
Peter Atrill Eddie McLaney
Contents Section A: Authors’ Note to Tutors
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Section B: Solutions to Exercises
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SECTION A
Authors’ Note to Tutors Using the text The text is designed to provide readers with a sound introduction to accounting and finance. It assumes no previous knowledge of these subjects and recognises that students using the text may come from a wide variety of backgrounds. The text, therefore, tries to avoid technical jargon and does not assume that students have a high level of numerical ability. The text has been class tested by students on various courses and we have modified and refined the material to take account of their comments. We have also taken account of the comments made by lecturers who used the first six editions of the text. The text aims to encourage an active approach to learning by providing activities and selfassessment questions at appropriate points in the text. This is designed to stimulate thought concerning particular issues and to give the readers the opportunity to test their understanding of the principles covered. The text is supplemented by a password-controlled lecturers' website and a student website available to all readers. The structure of the text allows the tutor to deliver the subject in a number of ways. It can be used as recommended reading for a traditional course based on lectures and tutorials. There are review questions and exercises at the end of each chapter that can be used as the basis for tutorials. It could also provide the basis for a distance learning approach for part-time or off-campus students. For these students, the interactive nature of the text may be extremely useful where access to a tutor is restricted. The text can also be used as the basis for an open-learning approach for fulltime campus-based students. We successfully used it in this way at the University of Plymouth Business School. Accounting ‘surgeries’ were provided to give students the opportunity for oneto-one help with any problems they may face. The text is appropriate for modules that are designed to be covered in 150 – 200 hours of study. For full-time students, this will often be covered in one academic year (two semesters). For students who are only studying a one-semester course in accounting and finance, it will be necessary to adopt a selective approach to the chapters to be studied. The first six chapters deal with the nature and role of financial accounting and give a good grounding in the major financial statements. This will, however, take up much of the time available. It should, nevertheless, be possible to select further chapters for study from the remaining chapters in the text.
PowerPoint slides The diagrams in the text, along with other diagrams and materials (including the new ‘bullet point’ chapter summaries), are available as PowerPoint slides. These should help in delivering lectures and tutorials. They can be downloaded from the lecturers' website.
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Peter Atrill and Eddie McLaney, Accounting and Finance for Non-Specialists, 7th Edition, Instructor’s Manual
International financial reporting standards For accounting periods starting on or after 1 January 2005, Stock-Exchange listed companies in EU countries (including the UK) have had to prepare their published, consolidated financial statements in line with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs), formulated by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). This represented a major change for UK listed companies because IFRSs not only superseded UK financial reporting standards, but much of UK company law as well. IFRSs tend to use terminology that used not to be in widespread usage in the UK. They also tend to be less prescriptive about formats of the financial statements than was the case under UK company law. During the early stages of the transition to IFRSs, it was not clear whether UK listed companies would adopt the IASB terminology and whether they would stay with the old companies’ acts formats. By the time of writing this new edition, however, practice had the opportunity to show itself as all listed companies had published several annual reports. It seems that, although listed companies are not following a uniform approach, a clear majority is taking a similar approach, which we have followed in this book. Though non-listed companies need not make the change to the IASB rules immediately, they may do so. The question then arises as to whether non-listed businesses will follow the same approach as their listed counterparts. We carried out a survey of a number of practitioners and academics with a particular interest in the company financial reporting. The consensus view is that non-listed companies will follow their listed counterparts and will do so fairly quickly. This edition fully reflects the changes caused by the advent of the IASB rules, which can be summarised as follows:
Changes in terminology Traditional UK term
IASB term
Profit and loss account
Income statement
Balance sheet
Statement of financial position
Cash flow statement
Statement of cash flows
Fixed asset
Non-current asset
Tangible fixed asset
Property, plant and equipment
Creditors: amounts falling due within one year
Current liabilities
Creditors: amounts falling due after more than one year
Non-current liabilities
Debtors
Receivables
Trade debtors
Trade receivables
Creditors
Payables
Trade creditors
Trade payables 5 .
Peter Atrill and Eddie McLaney, Accounting and Finance for Non-Specialists, 7th Edition, Instructor’s Manual
For listed companies, the published annual reports show that the IASB terms have become the norm. We have, therefore, used IASB terms throughout, but refer to their traditional UK equivalents from time to time.
Formats Though the IASB does not require that particular formats be used for the statement of financial position and income statement, a key standard does provide illustrative formats. These formats seem to be widely followed for listed companies and have been adopted in the book. It has been pointed out, however, that other approaches to layout are permitted and do exist. No doubt the traditional terminology and formats will linger, particularly with smaller companies and unincorporated businesses, but we believe that the financial statements that students are likely to encounter (that is, those of larger, mainly listed, companies) will be consistent with the approach taken in this book.
Ordering of material The order in which topics are dealt with is clearly a matter of opinion. Our broad approach is to try to build up students' knowledge and understanding and to try to avoid situations where reference needs to be made to material appearing later in the text. We have taken the view that financial accounting is a good place to start, partly because students probably know of this aspect of accounting and finance from their background. It tends to be discussed in the news media etc. Also, we feel that this aspect is easier to deal with without knowledge of management accounting and finance. Within financial accounting, we have dealt with the statement of financial position and income statement, then with company accounting, then the statement of cash flows and on to financial accounting ratios. When dealing with the statement of financial position and income statement (in Chapters 2 and 3), we have made no real distinction between companies and unincorporated businesses. This is because we see no great difference between these, except when there is the need to go into detail about the restrictions on withdrawals of equity, and this is covered in Chapter 4 on company accounting. We have left statements of cash flows until after introducing companies, because these statements usually relate to companies and the problem areas often relate to aspects like dividends and taxation.
Double-entry bookkeeping The text does not cover double-entry bookkeeping, in the sense of 'T' accounts. We have taken the view that students can gain a sufficient grasp of both the principles and practice of transaction recording, and their ultimate effect on the statement of financial position and income statement, by dealing with them on a 'plus and minus' basis. We feel that, for the target readership, the recording process is of limited importance and that the key issues relate to the effect of transactions on the overall business. It may be the case that students' understanding of this would be enhanced by a closer look at the recording process, through 'T' accounts, but this will take time, which we believe could be better devoted to other topics. We are aware that not all of our colleagues agree with us on this and so an appendix – 'Recording financial transactions' – is available for tutors to download. This can be slotted into
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