The purpose of the Final Project is to apply the concepts and techniques of the module to the analysis of real-world situations or problems. Students are expected to use diverse sources of information and to carry out an original analysis rather than summarise or rehash existing work. Students are encouraged to use situations and data from their own experience where possible.
Your task for Week 5 is to prepare and hand in a Project Proposal that includes the nature of the project, the sources of information you plan to use, and the most important concepts and techniques to be applied. You will receive feedback on the proposal from the Instructor in Week 6, which will give you time to make adjustments.
For this module, you are required to complete a course project that reveals mastery in application of the management accounting and finance concepts emphasised in the course. This involves reporting on a specific organisation within an industry and the management accounting and finance practices that affect the value of the chosen firm or industry. This project should be a formal business report that provides both specific processes and strategies involving budgeting, costing, capital decision making, capital acquisition, and cost of capital structure of the chosen firm. These processes and strategies are to be supported with management accounting concepts.
For this project, you will select a company that you are familiar with or work for. If you have chosen a company to research for a previous module, you must inform the Instructor and send him or her the previously submitted work. The Instructor will then inform you whether or not you may reuse the same company.
Your tasks are to:
- Assess the budgeting process and procedures for the organisation with regards to preparation techniques, uses for evaluation, differences between business units/divisions, etc.
- Analyse how the organisation collects, stores, and prepares management accounting information, particularly the use of a management accounting system (MAS) and how information is disseminated throughout the organisation.
- Evaluate the costing process and procedures of the organisation with respect to method or approach utilised.
- Assess the capital decision making process within the organisation with regards to what methods are utilised, how such methods are chosen, how projects are selected and managed, and what measures are employed to evaluate performance.
- Evaluate the criteria or mechanisms used by the organisation for deciding how best to acquire capital and analyse the capital structure of the company.
Your Final Project should follow the given outline:
- Brief description of company
- Description of firm's budgeting process
- Management accounting information system
- Costing process
- Capital decisions
- Capital acquisition and structure
- Conclusion
Your Final Project should also include a section on how and where you obtained the information sources as well as the methodology used to perform any analysis. This project should follow a structured approach and should be prepared and presented as a professional business report.
The objective here is to frame your final project in a way that tells me what company you have selected and specifically:
1. Clearly articulate the nature of the project,
2. The sources of information you plan to use, and
3. Identify the most important concepts and techniques to be applied.
This should be completed within a maximum of 500-words, as it is not a draft of the project (which is not required in this course) it's a concept piece that alerts me to what you plan to do and to help you framing what you will need to do to complete a successful final project.