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日期：2023-03-17 08:28

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.