CSU ACT 510 Accounting Paper

This Portfolio Project option has two parts: calculations and a written analysis. While the calculation requirements of this assignment are important, equally important are your discussion and analysis of the quantitative results and your application of the forensic accounting and fraud examination tools taught in this course.

Choose a publicly traded company that has incurred a public accounting scandal in the last five years which included the need for financial statements’ restatements, and perform an expanded analysis on the financial statements from that period. Please make use of the 10-K statements available on the SEC website (Links to an external site.) or annual statements in Google Finance (Links to an external site.).

The Portfolio Project preliminary deliverables are as follows:

• Week 4: Submit the name of the company that you selected for approval by your instructor and a one-page outline of your paper, including references.
• Week 6: Submit the proposed final references section for your project.

Part 1: Prepare an Excel workbook with separate tabs for each of the following:

• Horizontal and vertical analysis of the income statements for at least three years surrounding the incident (all yearly balances set as a percentage of total revenues for that year).
• Horizontal and vertical analysis of the balance sheets for at least three years surrounding the incident (all yearly balances set as a percentage of total assets for that year or total liabilities/equity).
• Ratio analysis (eight ratios of your choosing) for the three years surrounding the incident. Note — you should choose ratios that are likely to provide insight into the incident based on which accounts were impacted by the fraudulent activity (hindsight being 20/20, you know the fraud that has occurred).
• Thoroughly analyze specific accounts based on the nature of the fraud that was perpetrated by the corporation. For example, if the corporation was improperly handling revenue, there should be a deep-dive analysis of the revenue accounts throughout the applicable periods that highlights the scandal.
• Incorporate technical tools (i.e. SQL, ODBC, Digital Analysis, etc.) that are applicable to your researched scandal.

Part 2: Prepare the written analysis addressing each of the following:

• Provide your reader with an overall understanding of the scandal, along with the results of the financial analysis that you completed, including:
  1. Discussion of the results of your horizontal and vertical analyses.
  2. Discussion of the results of your ratio analysis, including rationale for the selected ratios.
  3. Discussion of the analysis performed on specific accounts and rationale for why those accounts were selected for a more thorough analysis.
• Include a discussion of the fraud examination methods applied. Evaluate whether the methods could have been improved upon in this scandal.
• Write a 10-12 pages (double-spaced) paper, not including the cover and reference pages. Supporting documents (i.e. charts, graphics, etc.) should be included as addendums to your report and not in the body of the report.
• The paper must be formatted according to the CSU Global Writing Center (Links to an external site.).
• Demonstrate your comprehension of the course material.
• Use professional business language.
• Include a minimum of six credible, academic or professional references from the CSU Global Library (Links to an external site.), in addition to the textbook.

Requirements for the final deliverables :

• Submit 2 files:
  • Excel workbook
  • Word document

Review the grading rubric to see how you will be graded for this assignment.