Matching Items (22)
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- All Subjects: Accounting
- Creators: Department of Information Systems
- Member of: Theses and Dissertations
- Status: Published
Description
The competitive nature of business requires managers to consistently work towards eliminating unnecessary costs and improving financial management. Worldwide, fraud remains a pervasive and expensive problem for businesses. Fraud involving misappropriation of assets (commonly referred to as embezzlement) and fraudulent financial reporting cost organizations trillions of dollars worldwide. To better understand the most effective ways of combating misappropriation and to a lesser extent, fraudulent financial reporting, this paper evaluates research and reports the results of expert interviews with accountants, forensic experts, and security specialists.
ContributorsMurnane, George (Author) / Munshi, Perseus (Thesis director) / Pany, Kurt (Committee member) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / WPC Graduate Programs (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
This software can process transactions for small businesses and store those transactions for reporting purposes. The specific build is tailor made for a small business run by the author and their partners. The software is a customized, in house solution for maintaining accurate accounting information. It uses C# code and windows forms to create a unique GUI to both enter and retrieve data. The code for each form is attached at the end of the user manual.
ContributorsGodfrey, David Emmanuel (Author) / Olsen, Christopher (Thesis director) / Anderson, Dennis (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
This case study analyzed the internal controls of a real estate company using the widely accepted COSO framework. Testing of the internal environment and controls was completed using the COSO framework. The major internal control problem identified in the study was a lack of ethical standards in the control environment. In addition to this main problem, inadequate documentation, no separation of duties, and unqualified employees were also identified as violations of effective internal controls. The department of real estate ordered a "cease and desist" on August 8, 2013 due to illegal company activities. The company participated in illegal actions regarding: the trust account and company documentation and procedures. Material weaknesses were found in the company's internal controls; therefore the result of this study was an adverse opinion on internal controls.
ContributorsFrederick, Nicole Lorraine (Author) / Munshi, Perseus (Thesis director) / Benali, Kayla (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2013-12
Description
In 2004, the American Jobs Creation Act allowed a yearlong repatriation holiday for corporations in the United States. The corporations could bring their earnings back to the United States at a considerably reduced tax rate under this repatriation holiday. Despite some criticisms of the original repatriation holiday, there have been attempts to recreate the repatriation holiday. I created an estimate of what the companies who participated in the first repatriation holiday would pay in taxes and what amount of previously permanently reinvested earnings they would be able to bring back to the United States under a second repatriation holiday. This revealed $744 billion in post-tax earnings that could be brought back to the United States. The data is a good starting point for expanded research on the impacts and implications of a new repatriation holiday, despite the hypothetical nature of the data and its potential for obsolescence.
ContributorsMasters, Matthew Brandon (Author) / Brown, Jenny (Thesis director) / Levendowski, Glenda (Committee member) / Duncan, William (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
Developed a business product with a team of CS Students
ContributorsHernandez, Maximilliano (Co-author) / Schneider, Kaitlin (Co-author) / Perri, Cole (Co-author) / Call, Andy (Thesis director) / Hunt, Neil (Committee member) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Department of Management and Entrepreneurship (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
Financial statements are one of the most important, if not the most important, documents for investors. These statements are prepared quarterly and yearly by the company accounting department, and are then audited in detail by a large external accounting firm. Investors use these documents to determine the value of the company, and trust that the company was truthful in its statements, and the auditing firm correctly audited the company's financial statements for any mistakes in their books and balances. Mistakes on a company's financial statements can be costly. However, financial fraud on the statements can be outright disastrous. Penalties for accounting fraud can include individual lifetime prison sentences, as well as company fines for billions of dollars. As students in the accounting major, it is our responsibility to ensure that financial statements are accurate and truthful to protect ourselves, other stakeholders, and the companies we work for. This ethics game takes the stories of Enron, WorldCom, and Lehman Brothers and uses them to help students identify financial fraud and how it can be prevented, as well as the consequences behind unethical decisions in financial reporting. The Enron scandal involved CEO Kenneth Lay and his predecessor Jeffery Skilling hiding losses in their financial statements with the help of their auditing firm, Arthur Andersen. Enron collapsed in 2002, and Lay was sentenced to 45 years in prison with his conspirator Skilling sentenced to 24 years in prison. In the WorldCom scandal, CEO Bernard "Bernie" Ebbers booked line costs as capital expenses (overstating WorldCom's assets), and created fraudulent accounts to inflate revenue and WorldCom's profit. Ebbers was sentenced to 25 years in prison and lost his title as WorldCom's Chief Executive Officer. Lehman Brothers took advantage of a loophole in accounting procedure Repo 105, that let the firm hide $50 billion in profits. No one at Lehman Brothers was sentenced to jail since the transaction was technically considered legal, but Lehman was the largest investment bank to fail and the only large financial institution that was not bailed out by the U.S. government.
ContributorsPanikkar, Manoj Madhuraj (Author) / Samuelson, Melissa (Thesis director) / Ahmad, Altaf (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Over the years from 2009 to 2017, the people of Arizona witnessed the state consistently defunding the schools, its students academically underperforming, and as a result, the poverty achievement gap widening. Even with the efforts in recent years to re-invest in education, Arizona’s education funding falls below its level at 2008 and the national average. Among Arizona’s funding sources is the Public School Tax Credit, a unique legislation for the state that allows for taxpayers to donate money to certain programs at Arizona public schools and reduce their state income tax liability dollar-for-dollar. Because of the already severe achievement gap in Arizona, this funding source which relies on surrounding neighborhoods’ income raises the concern that, instead of helping Arizona students, it is exacerbating the existing achievement gap. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between income and donations received by schools to determine the validity of this concern. To ensure a comprehensive examination of the relationship between income and donations received, regression tests are run on both the aggregate level and individual level. The tests find that, although income does have a statistically significant correlation with the donations received, it is only positive for the effect of total income on total donations, negative for the effect of average income per return on average donation per donor, and negative for average income per return on total donations. The results imply that to garner high donations, it matters less to be located in a high-earning neighborhood and more important to be located in a moderate-earning neighborhood with a lot of people donating using this credit. Therefore, the concern of income’s effect on donations is valid, but perhaps not in the straightforward way that we would expect.
ContributorsChen, Vivian Young (Author) / Kenchington, David (Thesis director) / Brown, Jenny (Committee member) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-12
Description
The concept of data analytics has become a primary focus for companies of all types, and from within all industries. Leveraging data to enhance the decision making power of management is now vital for companies to remain competitive. Beginning as a movement pioneered by tech-startups and teams of university researchers, data analytics is reshaping every industry that it touches, and the field of accounting has been no exception.
Corporate buzzword terms like “big data” and “data analytics” are vague in meaning, and are thrown around by media sources often enough to obfuscate their actual meanings. These concepts are then associated with company-wide initiatives beyond the reach of the individual, in a nebulous world where people know that analytics happens, but don’t understand what it is.
The power of data analytics is not reserved for company-wide initiatives, or only employed by Silicon Valley tech start-ups. Its impacts are visible down at the team or department level, and can be conducted by the individual employees. The field of data analytics is evolving, and within it exists a rapid transition in which the individual employee is becoming a source for insight and value creation through the adoption of analytics based approaches.
The purpose of this thesis is to showcase an example of this claim, and demonstrate how an analytics based approach was applied to an existing accounting process to create new insights and information. To do this, I will discuss my development of an Excel based Dashboard Analytics tool, which I completed during my internship with Bechtel Corporation throughout the summer of 2018, and I will use this analytics tool to demonstrate the improvements that small-scale analytics had on a pre-existing process. During this discussion, I will address conceptual aspects of database design that related to my project, and will show how I applied this classroom learning to a working environment. The paper will begin with an overview of the desired goals of the group in which I was based, and will then analyze how the needs of the group led to the creation and implementation of this new analytics-based reporting tool. I will conclude with a discussion of the potential future use of this tool, and how the inclusion of these analytical approaches will continue to shape the working environment.
Corporate buzzword terms like “big data” and “data analytics” are vague in meaning, and are thrown around by media sources often enough to obfuscate their actual meanings. These concepts are then associated with company-wide initiatives beyond the reach of the individual, in a nebulous world where people know that analytics happens, but don’t understand what it is.
The power of data analytics is not reserved for company-wide initiatives, or only employed by Silicon Valley tech start-ups. Its impacts are visible down at the team or department level, and can be conducted by the individual employees. The field of data analytics is evolving, and within it exists a rapid transition in which the individual employee is becoming a source for insight and value creation through the adoption of analytics based approaches.
The purpose of this thesis is to showcase an example of this claim, and demonstrate how an analytics based approach was applied to an existing accounting process to create new insights and information. To do this, I will discuss my development of an Excel based Dashboard Analytics tool, which I completed during my internship with Bechtel Corporation throughout the summer of 2018, and I will use this analytics tool to demonstrate the improvements that small-scale analytics had on a pre-existing process. During this discussion, I will address conceptual aspects of database design that related to my project, and will show how I applied this classroom learning to a working environment. The paper will begin with an overview of the desired goals of the group in which I was based, and will then analyze how the needs of the group led to the creation and implementation of this new analytics-based reporting tool. I will conclude with a discussion of the potential future use of this tool, and how the inclusion of these analytical approaches will continue to shape the working environment.
ContributorsCunningham, Jared (Author) / Dawson, Gregory (Thesis director) / Prince, Linda (Committee member) / WPC Graduate Programs (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
This paper consists of a literature review, wherein four papers surrounding Motivation Crowding Theory (MCT) were read and analyzed. The paper then goes into an analysis of a survey I conducted. The survey consisted of three main questions with three sub-questions for each, and all attempted to find a "limit" to MCT. However, results for the survey were ultimately inconclusive. The paper concludes with lessons learned in conducting research and surveys in particular, as well as a nod to the relevancy of MCT in business and personal applications.
ContributorsSmith, Mallory Anne (Author) / Reckers, Phil (Thesis director) / Samuelson, Melissa (Committee member) / Lowe, Jordan (Committee member) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / WPC Graduate Programs (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
This research study aims to find out the way how goodwill should be evaluated. This paper is about accounting for goodwill which will provide general information about goodwill value, especially of public companies. Additionally, I will discuss sources of goodwill, the importance of goodwill, why it is important to evaluate goodwill correctly, and what methods have been applied to evaluate goodwill. This thesis will analyze the advantages and disadvantages of both methods of accounting for goodwill which are the impairment testing method and the amortization method. This study is done by researching studies, journal articles, reviews, books, and websites about accounting. Lastly, this study will provide a suggestion for how goodwill should be evaluated effectively.
ContributorsPham, Trang Thi Thuy (Author) / Shields, Paul (Thesis director) / Huang, Xiaochuan (Committee member) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05