ICAS Project plan

dsavickij

Hi,

I have just read over the AAT Inkwell case study and I decided to write about the Payroll.

Looking at the template project plan that I have to fill out I am a bit confused.

One of the question to fill out is:

Describe (in relation to the organisation) the 3 main financial statements – Income statement, SOFP and Statement of Cashflow. (PIC 1.2) What do they show, who uses them, what decisions are made based on them?

There does not seem to be enough information in the case study to answer this.

If anyone can shed some light on how it is meant to be filled out I will be delighted!

Thanks

coojee

dsavickij wrote: »

Hi,

I have just read over the AAT Inkwell case study and I decided to write about the Payroll.

Looking at the template project plan that I have to fill out I am a bit confused.

One of the question to fill out is:

Describe (in relation to the organisation) the 3 main financial statements – Income statement, SOFP and Statement of Cashflow. (PIC 1.2) What do they show, who uses them, what decisions are made based on them?

There does not seem to be enough information in the case study to answer this.

If anyone can shed some light on how it is meant to be filled out I will be delighted!

Thanks

You only need to talk about the statements in general; what they are, who uses them etc etc. It's not specific to the organisation. So for SCI you'd say that it shows the profit or loss made for the year, that it needs to be prepared and sent to Co's House every year and that potential investors might use it to decide whether to invest, suppliers to decide whether to give credit, things like that.

JohnDelaney60

Hi There

Look at what the finance director does
You may have to make assumptions
That this information is used

MarieNoelle

Have you studied financial statements yet? It could be helpful to answer this question.

If you run out the space, you can include this in your appendices - For my project, I just made a quick reference to it in the body of the report and wrote further explanations in an appendix.

Hope this helps.
MN

dsavickij

Thank you all

I have done Financial statements and can comment on the question- I just could not comment in relation to Inkwell as not enough information is provided.

This is just for the project plan that I have to submit to Kaplan for approval so assume everything can be kept quite brief?

MarieNoelle

As coojee say, you can keep it general - I hardly had any reference to it in my case study either.

JohnDelaney60

I submitted my plan to Kaplan
And they are not looking for you to
Be brief. Without giving it away that's
Why I said look at what the finance director
does the assumption is made from there

John

JohnDelaney60

I submitted my plan to Kaplan
And they are not looking for you to
Be brief. Without giving it away that's
Why I said look at what the finance director
does the assumption is made from there

John

dsavickij

Thank you.

I am trying to answer the questions but not trying to go in to too much detail. Hopefully that will be enough.

The only other strange question i have come across is :

Do they have to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley?

I have never heard of this and it has not been written about in Osbourne books.

Jo Clark

If you don't know what this is I would advise that you google SOX Act of 2002.

Just for info, I never referred to this in my project.

coojee

dsavickij wrote: »

Thank you.

I am trying to answer the questions but not trying to go in to too much detail. Hopefully that will be enough.

The only other strange question i have come across is :

Do they have to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley?

I have never heard of this and it has not been written about in Osbourne books.

I agree with Jo, you don't need to include anything about SOX, it's not in the standards for ICAS.

The Magician

I think it is something to do with the document retention policy. Six years ya'know?

The FD did suggest a new measure within the Inkwell case study so that they would comply with SOX.

Just saying.

ExcelAnt

Hiya,

For those unaware of SOX check out the below, well worth a good read if you have time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes%E2%80%93Oxley_Act
I dislike sourcing Wikipedia, but in this context it is a good starting point.

The act came about due to a number of large frauds in 2000-2002 Enron being the mainly publicized one.

@The magician see the second paragraph
http://searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/Sarbanes-Oxley-Act

Within the workplace my understanding (whenever it's been thrown about the office) is segregation of duties to reduce fraud risks.

For example if you had an AP clerk who processes invocies, authorises them, pays them and reconciles the bank what is to stop him adding his own company invoices - dummy company named "hahahaha the money is mine ltd"?

Segregation means someone else would reconcile them bank, another person authories an invoice and a different person again approves all payments - at least ideally, massively reducing the risk of Fraud.

Not exactly relevant to the OP post, but there are fraud elements under the ICAS if i remember correctly.

James Patterson

I'm doing ICAS at the moment also.

All i did for that was state how all the statements reflect the finances of the business and who it is useful to being directors (usually board of directors) and shareholders, potential investors and also some of the public. basically anyone who would want to know the financial status of a company to see how well they're doing, whether its worth investing etc.

I'm doing Financial statements at the same time and this unit did help me with ICAS in parts (i think at least, its not been marked yet).

Hope this helps

Jo Clark

James Patterson wrote: »

I'm doing Financial statements at the same time and this unit did help me with ICAS in parts (i think at least, its not been marked yet).

I was advised to leave ICAS till last so that I would have gained knowledge from other modules. I certainly found what I learnt in FNST relevant to ICAS. Having said that, it is possible to do ICAS as the first module at level 4.

James Patterson

I started it straight away once i started level 4 but do exams at the same time, and FNST did help, with termonology and giving you an idea what to write, but i agree it is managable without.