ACCT90013 Financial Accounting Theory & Practice
Semester 1, 2023
DEPARTMENT OF ACCOUNTING
ACCT90013 FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING THEORY & PRACTICE
Semester 1, 2023
Engagement Assignments
GENERAL
INFORMATION
This assignment consists of four summaries, each representing
7.5% and together representing 30% of your overall grade for
this subject.
This assignment is to be completed individually.
WORD LIMIT No more than 300 words for each essay.
ADMINISTRA-
TION
Assignments must be typed, 1.5-spaced with font size of 11
(Arial) or 12 (Times New Roman). All pages should be numbered.
SUBMISSION
Submission should be made via the LMS subject page.
Please make sure that you only submit the final version of the
assignment (as a pdf document) and that the file name has the
following format: Week(assigned lecture week
number)_(student number).pdf (without spaces), for
example, “Week5_1000000.pdf”. In your submission, please
provide a title and state your name and student ID.
FURTHER
INFORMATION
For information relating to plagiarism/collusion, late submission,
special consideration, referencing, penalties, teaching and
learning unit, please refer to the subject guide.
Engagement Assignments
These assignments fulfil the purposes of getting you to engage with the materials, of applying
the concepts to current practice and real-world developments, and of learning how to update
your professional knowledge independently by reading high-quality business news. You are
allocated four lecture weeks with corresponding due dates in the following weeks before the
corresponding seminars.
Lecture Week and Topic Due Tuesdays 11.59AM (noon)
Week 3: Recognition 21 March
Week 6: Equity Valuation 18 April
Week 8: Compensation Contracting 2 May
Week 11: Disclosure 23 May
To complete the assignment, you should follow the following process:
1. Watch the lecture recording.
2. Pick one specific idea/observation/argument that was discussed in the lecture that
you want to explore further. Use a specific idea/observation/argument and not one
that is broad or generic (see further guidance below).
3. Find a high-quality business press article about a case company, fund, or
professional body online from the past 3 years (1 January 2020-now). As a student
at the University of Melbourne you have free-of-charge access to a wide range of
resources. The article must be in English, where notable newspapers and news outlets
include but are not limited to the (Australian) Financial Review, Bloomberg,
Thomson Reuters, New York Times, Forbes, Financial Times, The Economist, Wall
Street Journal, Fortune etc. For information and instructions on how to access
shielded sources as an accounting student at the University of Melbourne please see
https://unimelb.libguides.com/accounting. Note that, in addition to the article that you
have selected, you may need to perform further research to fully understand the issue
at hand in the selected article.
4. Write a short essay of at most 300-words length, consisting of (i) a concise
statement of the idea/observation/argument you selected in your own words (no
copying from slides is permitted even if properly referenced), (ii) a brief summary of
the relevant issues in the selected article, (iii) and a reflection on how the issues in the
article relate to the selected idea/observation/argument.
In your essay, properly reference the sources you use, including author names, date
and year of publication, title, news media outlet and a public unshielded link to the
article. You can use any referencing style (including APA, Chicago, and Harvard) as
long as you are consistent in your referencing (i.e., you apply the same referencing
style to all references). Note that the references do not count towards the word count.
5. Add a title and your student name and number, and save your essay as a pdf.
6. Submit pdf via LMS Canvas before the due date.
In the corresponding seminar, the instructor will present and discuss the best articles you
have found. Note that if your article is presented, this does not automatically imply a high
mark as marks are based on a number of criteria (see Marking Guide below).
2
Sample Essay
Preface (not part of the essay): An example for an engagement assignment summary for our
session on Income (week 5) is below. During the Income session we take a deep dive into the
practice of so-called non-GAAP reporting. Non-GAAP reporting is the voluntary provision of
financial information in addition to GAAP reporting. It uses alternative accounting
measurement rules that deviate from the rules prescribed by accounting standards, where
GAAP is an abbreviation for Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and is synonymous
for accounting standards (the most important of which are IFRS and U.S. GAAP).
Sample essay: “Firms choose accounting measurement policies in their voluntary non-GAAP
reporting for opportunistic reasons to mislead investors about their true fundamentals.
One example is the case of Tesla, Inc., an electric vehicle manufacturer with headquarter in
Palo Alto, USA. Tesla was accused and later convicted of trying to mislead investors about
its liquidity and underlying financial performance. Tesla applied an accelerated revenue
recognition process which leads to a boost in revenues that are too uncertain to be recognised.
The issue at hand concerns guarantees Tesla gave on vehicle leases through banking partners
which effectively guaranteed a predetermined end-of-lease vehicle sales price for which,
under US GAAP, firms must recognise a liability from deferred revenue. However, in its
non-GAAP reporting Tesla excluded these liabilities, boosting its gross revenues. The SEC
found that this practice was misleading about the true revenues of Tesla and levied a penalty
on Tesla as punishment.
The case of Tesla is a good example of opportunistic non-GAAP reporting. The company
was under great pressure from investors to become profitable as its financial health was a
precondition for another funding round that was necessary to support its aggressive expansion
strategy. Yet accounting standards (in this case U.S. GAAP) prescribed more conservative
accounting for revenue recognition under which the company was unable to report a profit.
However, due to the perceived leeway in complementary non-GAAP reporting, the company
applied a more aggressive revenue recognition policy which enabled Tesla to report a non-
GAAP profit. It further emphasized the non-GAAP profit over the GAAP loss in all its
disclosures, potentially confusing and misleading investors about its true profitability. As this
violates securities regulation, Tesla was disciplined.”
References
Shen, L., 2016. The SEC Calls Out Tesla for “Individually Tailored” Earnings Figures.
Fortune 30 November 2016, URL: https://fortune.com/2016/11/30/sec-tesla-earnings-
cooking-the-books-resale/.”
Marking Guide
You will be marked based on (i) the quality and conciseness with which you outline the
selected idea/observation/argument, (ii) whether the article you have selected properly
reflects the idea/observation/argument, (iii) the conciseness of the summary of the selected
article, and (iv) the quality of reflection and argumentation you establish to link the article to
the selected idea/observation/argument.
In general, steer clear from being generic in your assignments. For instance, the
idea/observation/argument in the above sample essay is that “Firms choose accounting
measurement policies in their voluntary non-GAAP reporting for opportunistic reasons.”
Deductions will be made if your statement features a generic idea/observation/argument such
as “firms disclose additional financial information” or “firms provide information for
opportunistic reasons” as this would be too generic. A rule of thumb is that if it can fit in
most accounting classes you attended it is likely not specific enough. In addition, deductions
will be made for superficial reflections such as “The case of Tesla is a good example of
opportunistic non-GAAP reporting.” without providing a proper explanation for why this is
the case.
Also note that deductions will be made for unclear, confusing, or misleading writing as well
as noncompliance with the guidance provided. For example, marks are deducted if you select
an academic research study (often published in outlets that start with “Journal of” or “Review
of”) instead of a business press article. Deductions will also be made if the article was not
published in the prescribed time frame. For instance, the sample article is intentionally
chosen to be well out of the prescribed time range (2016 and not after early 2020), and a
deduction would be made.
Further as mentioned above, properly reference the sources you use and provide a public link
to the possibly shielded online sources, instead of a link that leads to the library platform
through which you might access the article. For instance, the sample article includes a link to
the original source Fortune instead of a ProQuest, Business Source Complete, or Factiva link.
The reason behind this point is to facilitate the marking of your assignments.
A Note on Late Submissions
Should you submit your engagement assignments late, the standard deductions are made
(10% per day). However, note that you are not allowed to choose and summarize an article
that was already discussed in the corresponding seminar. In this case, a full deduction of the
marks related to article selection is invoked in excess of the late submission penalty.