A lot has changed in my life and with my studies since I lasted used my blog page, so here’s an update on me.
I am now in my final term of my degree and that in itself is super exiting. I can’t believe I am almost done a full university degree! When I first began my studies I was an administration officer for a local non-for-profit organisation and after almost 2 years CQU contacted me about a potential job opportunity with a local employer. I didn’t know what the role would be or who it was for until after I said yes I would like to apply. I figured what did I have to lose. I was successful in my application and started work as a Finance Officer for a local growing agricultural company.
It is coming up to two years with that company and I have just recently been given the title of Assistant Accountant. To some people a new title may not mean a lot but for me it shows I have been working hard to build my knowledge and skills for the company and they see me as an important part of the team. My boss is amazing and has the same goals for me as I have being setting for myself. Us being on the same page and working towards the same goals makes going to work great and I can really see myself achieving what I am hoping to achieve in my career.
Life outside of work and study is going so great which I think is very beneficial. I have gone back to playing soccer, which makes my weeks so much busier but going twice a week to have fun and run around with friends makes those long days of work and study so much easier. My husband started a new career two years ago and hasn’t looked back, while our daughter is smashing year 3 and is growing up to be a lovely young girl.
Overall, life is good, busy but good and I can’t wait to see what the next 6-12 months brings for my career and personal life.
Well that was fun! There was so much to learn and discover while completing steps 7-10. I currently don’t work in a finance position so a lot of the processes and experiences for these steps were new for me. Using MYOB for the first time in about 16 years was fun. Something about entering in data and seeing how it turned out in the financial reports was interesting to complete. Investigating through my firms annual reports once again to find out more about how they include and don’t include items in their reports was something that I found interesting for this assignment.
I am looking to complete my feedback Friday/Saturday and would love to exchange feedback with people. If you are keen to exchange let me know and I’ll get onto it.
Completing step 4 was fun for me as I got to enter in numbers into a spreadsheet. What made it even more interesting was the fact it was my own figures of our personal accounts I got to use and analyse for this task. This process made me realise how many transactions my husband I make in just a single month, and I did even use all 6 of our bank accounts! Completing this step made me reflect and think I would love to complete it for every account we have and get a really accurate picture of our income versus expenses. Maybe something I can do to get some more practice categorising accounts.
Step 5, creating a trial balance, wow what a satisfying achievement to complete.
I did my trial balance alone side Maria’s video and paused as I needed to throughout. The first part of course is easy just copying across the figures into the spreadsheet from my company’s annual report. Using the three things to memorise over and over as I did this task really helped to make sure I put each in the right columns as I had a few different to Maria. The last step of reserving the revenue, expenses and other comprehensive income was clearly the most time consuming. My figures for other comprehensive income were a bit hard to work out where they needed to be reversed because they were not easy numbers to “find”. I needed to add up numbers in the changes of equity statement to try match figures in the other comprehensive income section. Once I was able to determine which went where it made it easier, but it took a bit to realise which figures I was needing to match. Once it clicked which amount I was looking for it became easier to work out which amount needed to be reversed where and then balance it out.
There was a bit of trial and error which got me so close, then started the process from the start and it all just fell into place. I feel having to try a few different ways and delete start again and talking out aloud that I need to subtract the credits and adding the debits in the retained earnings and then the opposite in the reserves by adding the credits and subtracting the debits, really helped it sink in the process.
I look forward to discussing how others went and what their thoughts on the task are.
For this assignment I have been given the company Incitec Pivot Limited (IPL) and just like in ACCT11059 it is a company I have never heard of but will become very familiar with over the next few weeks.
Although I completed ACCT11059 over twelve months ago now, I have found IPL’s annual reports a little easier to understand then Select Harvest (my firm for ACCT11059). I believe this is largely due to the experience of reading through an annual report previously and remembering there is a lot in the report I don’t need to absorb and that I just need to get a good idea of what is happening in and around IPL and of course the financial statements.
I have attached my step 3 draft for any one interested in having a look. Feedback is always welcome.
Hope everyone is enjoying discovering about their own company’s.
Hi all and welcome to my blog page. My name is Mel and I am using this blog to interact and share my thoughts on Introductory Financial Accounting. Like most of you, I have used this blog page in ACCT11059 and what a new experience that was. I felt it was a whole new way of communicating with fellow students, which in general is new for me. I am a lone ranger in my studies, however doing ACCT11059 definitely helped me to break out of that habit. In one of my last units there was also a group assignment which brought me out to talk and have discussions with other students.
I am really excited to get stuck into this accounting unit as its a topic that I have a real interest in, this always helps when needing to spend a good chunk of my time on it. I’m sure I won’t get to talk to all of you throughout the term but I hope to form some good relationships with some of you to greatly benefit from each other in terms of giving and receiving feedback for our tasks.
Hi and welcome to my first ever blog. My name is Melissa, most people call me Mel, and I am currently studying Accounting, Learning and Online Communication ACCT11059 with CQU via distance education. Studying is still relatively new to me with this only my second unit. Blogging however is extremely new, but I am ready to embrace the change.
I will be using this blog to reflect how my learning for this unit is going and also to post my progress as the unit goes on. I look forward to reading other students blogs and I’m sure reading that I am not alone in the juggle of family, working and studying.
If you would like to click on my “About” page to learn more about who I am, how I intend to do this juggling and why I chose to study Bachelor of Business majoring in Accounting.
Thanks for reading and I look forward to reading any comments left by any readers
Hi everyone, here is my draft steps 3-5 and wow doesn’t that feel good to post these steps. The end is coming so fast now and I can’t wait to receive and provide feedback to complete this assessment.
It’s that time again to write my KCQs for chapter 7 and 8 for this unit. As I read through the chapters and taking some notes about what the study guide is discussing and teaching us, I get concerned I don’t have enough KCQs to discuss. What story is the study guide trying to teach me? What am I getting out of the study guide? Am I getting enough knowledge out of it to progress in my assessment? Let’s see how I went.
My firm has had interesting results for their Current Ratio with it gradually increasing from 5.58 to 7.13 before dropping to 5.45 in 2022. I believe the reasoning behind this trend up before dropping in 2022 is due to the liabilities steadily increasing as the firm grows but the cash and cash equivalents drastically dropping from 657,849 in 2021 to 404,192 in 2022. This causes the total current assets to drop while the total current liabilities are still increasing.
Investigating the drop in the cash and cash equivalents in 2022 after such a huge increase from 2020 (108,027) to 2021 (657,849), I can see that 2021 had the highest proceeds from issuance of convertible notes, net of issuance costs. While in 2022 the firm increased their investing activities by 117% by due to the acquisition of Planday, TaxCycle and the Waddle direct lending portfolio. I believe this is the driver in the current assets dropping from 2021 to 2022 and therefore having the effect on the Current Ratio.
Another ratio that I wanted to explore for my firm is was the Equity Ratio, how is my firm going with their equity are they moving in a positive way or not. The ratio shows they percentage is increased steadily over the four years, but what does that actually mean for Xero Limited. Equity ratio is calculated by the equity divided by the total assets and both these figures have greatly increased from 2019 to 2022. The equity has increased by 34% while total assets has increased by 41%, both seemingly positive increases for the firm. I believe the assets have increased due to positive growth in sales, intangible assets, trade and other receivables and short-term deposits. In 2019 it was the first year that Xero Limited’s international markets have collectively added more subscribers that in their foundation markets of New Zealand and Australia. This trend continued for the next four years which demonstrates Xero’s strategy to grow globally is a successful strategy to grow the firm. The share capital of the firm has also greatly increased from 627,848 in 2019 to 1,580,858 in 2022 which is the result of the acquisitions of Planday, TaxCycle, LOCATE Inventory. Tickstar plus the deferred consideration for the acquisition of Waddle and Tickstar. These acquisitions are proving to be beneficial for Xero Limited to continue their growth.
What else can I find interesting in my firm’s ratios.
Well its time again to get back into writing our KCQs about the chapters we are reading in the study guide. Even though this is only the start of this assessment I am feeling like this is the final push to the end of the term and my studies.
Reading chapter five and six of the study guide chapters made me think of a quote from Albert Einstein I found recently and now have stuck to my computer screen at work: “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”. I found this the case when reading through the chapters, there are areas I feel want to discuss but I am struggling to put them into words that make sense to someone else. I don’t know it well enough to explain it myself. Here is my attempt to explain the key concepts and questions I came across while reading chapter five and six.
I have attached my draft for assignment one and I am ready to give feedback to others and also hoping to receive some good feedback especially on the ratios part and my decision with the allocation of cash and cash equivalents .
I was unable to find any dividends paid to shareholders for my firm. I have added some evidence in my spreadsheet to support no dividends being paid in the past. Has anyone else found this with their firm?
With allocating the cash and cash equivalents I decided to allocate 10% to operating activities instead of the suggested 1% due to the higher percentages for my firm. One other student posted whether they should allocate higher than 1%, did anyone else need to make decisions like this for their firm?
Comparing with other firms will be interesting to see the results of the ratios for the different firms in the same industry.
How did you go with this step? I found it a good refresher and a good process to go through for my firm.
Here is what I have to say about the process for me:
Time has come to restate a financial statement once again and I was excited for this task. When I completed restating task in the first unit ACCT11059 Accounting and Online Learning back in 2019, I was excited to enter data into a spreadsheet and learn different little tricks in Excel from Maria’s videos. At the time I was not working in a finance role and I had just started as an administration officer in my first “office” job after 11 years working as a pathology collector. Using excel was exciting and I felt like I was really getting into the accounting type tasks. This time around I have been working for nearly 2 years in a finance role and excel is definitely a daily program I use, and I have become skilled in pivot tables, vlookups, text to columns and other formulas and tools. Even using Excel as much as I do for work, I was still excited to enter in all the data for step 4 and then complete the restating for step 5. Once again, I followed along with Maria’s videos and worked with her to complete the restating for my firm. This is such a great way to learn, being hands on and working with the teacher to put into practice what they are teaching. I feel doing the restating this term compared with back in ACCT11059 was similar, some items were easy to determine and others I needed to investigate. I didn’t feel frustration completing the task, some questions come out of it but not frustration.
To carry out the restating for Xero there was some items where I went to the notes of the financial statements in the annual report to check whether I should categorise as financial or operating. This included contingent consideration which for Xero consists of the groups probability weighted assessment of discount amounts payable to vendors in respect of business acquisitions. Due to the fact it is for business acquisitions and would relate to equity investors/debt investors not for the customers and suppliers (operation) of the business I decided to categorise as financial. This is an item which I’m sure I have heard of before, but it wasn’t familiar, so I learnt something possibly new.
I had questions on the other income and other expenses items because in 2022 and 2021 these are separated out but in 2020 and 2019, they are combined as one figure. I investigated the notes to try and separate them to be consistent over the four years, but there was no note number I could refer to so I could investigate. Another two items I questioned were the basic earnings/(loss) per share and diluted loss per share, I didn’t include these in the restating of my incomes statement as the figures aren’t included in the total comprehensive income/(loss) for the year, but should I have? This is something I will try and discuss with other students and see what they did for theirs and what they think.
When it came to cash and cash equivalents, I followed Maria’s lead with working out how to separate to operating and financial but using 1% like Maria’s seemed way to low for my firm. When dividing the cash and cash equivalents by total operating revenue the results for the four years ranged from 15.04% to 77.51%. I made the decision to allocate 10% of the item to operating and the remained to financial due to those percentages being well and truly over 1% unlike Maria’s firm. This will be another point to discuss with other students and see if anyone else had a similar consideration for their cash and cash equivalents. This result of my cash percentage made me also question why it is so high compared to Maria’s firm. Does my firm need to have so much cash and cash equivalents? I looked back to my firm from ACCT11059 and its cash way lower and under the 1% like Maria’s. I double checked I used the right figures and I have but it seems Xero’s cash is high and this is something I can investigate further.
I found this chapter a little more difficult to write key concepts that I found from this chapter and those bigger questions that I have from the reading. Don’t get me wrong there was a lot in this chapter to learn and also revise from past units were we have learnt some of the topics. However there wasn’t as many KCQs I thought would be good to write about and discuss. I am looking forward to tackling the restating of my firm’s financial statements and how I find this process for this term.
Here are the links to my step 1 and 2 key concepts and questions. It was a little fun getting back into writing my KCQs after completing two units previously with Martin. I feel this unit will be a great unit to complete in my last term of my degree.
Hi everyone and welcome to my first blog about my firm for this unit, Xero. I feel most of us should have heard of Xero before considering we are studying a business degree and possibly even majoring in accounting as I am.
My first thoughts when I opened the Find Your Company spreadsheet and saw Xero beside my name was that of excitement and relief, which soon turned into major disappointment! Let’s start with the excitement and relief first though, in the lead up to finding out my firm and even in my last two KCQ submissions I have been talking about hoping for a company I have heard of and possibly had some interest in, while I have never used Xero, I have that basic knowledge of what they do and the industry they are in, so I was excited. The relief was that it wasn’t a company that I just didn’t want to learn more about. I was going to be spending a lot of time on this company in the next 11 weeks, so I was relieved that I have an interest in the company. So why the major disappointment you ask, well being a curious George I went through the list and saw one person was allocated the Brisbane Broncos!!! As a massive footy fan and the Broncos being my team, I had major company envy and wished I could have been allocated my team to use for this unit. I’m so jealous but anyway lets more on.
What have I found out so far about Xero?
Xero are a New Zealand company which are in the technology industry providing cloud accounting software connecting business owners with their numbers, their bank, and advisors anytime for businesses across New Zealand, Australia, United Kingdom and North America. Xero provide a software for business owners to send invoices, perform bank reconciliations, pay bills, claim expenses, bank connections, accept payments, GST returns, payroll, inventory, purchase orders and the list just keeps going. While on the other side it provides a software to accountants and bookkeepers to manage clients, Xero Cashbook and Xero Ledger to start plans for smaller clients, Xero Tax a tax solution for clients while helping to manage practice efficiently with Xero Practice Manager just to name a few features. Xero can also help small businesses to find an accountant of bookkeeper in their location with a match-making tool to find the perfect help. Another service Xero provide is to help businesses to find support from a list of over 1,000 connected apps to help with just about any aspect of your business.
Having a read through the well presented and easy to read annual report I quickly discovered that Xero was a company that was on the rise (I believe). With their operating revenue (up 29%), subscribers (up 530,000 YoY), annualised monthly recurring revenue (up 28%) and total subscriber lifetime value (up 3.3b YoY) all seeing significant increases year over year at first glance things look good. My next step was to start a good search for any new articles about Xero to find out more about the company. I found a couple old articles on Nine Finance, which to begin with I though were quite interesting, Xero tells ASX it’s complying with rules, Xero shares jumps after $NZ147m investment but then seeing the 2015 date on both articles led me to move away from looking to much further into these articles as I want to focus on more recent activities. My search continued and I was intrigued to find an article on Yahoo Finance from 7 days ago, Estimating The Intrinsic Value of Xero Limited (ASX:XRO) and in the very first paragraph it said we could project Xero’s future cash flows and discount them to today’s value by using one method of the…. Discounted Cash Flow model!! I was shocked that one of the frameworks we are using this unit is mentioned in this article. It’s to early in the unit for me to say whether we are following the same processes as explained in this article but still I was totally interested.
I’m eager to get down into the nitty gritty and see if my first assumptions of a company on the rise is right and learn about Xero’s strategy and key challenges they face and successful they are against these challenges. Afterall, this is the information that is going to help me successfully analysis Xero’s financial statements.
Mel's Blog 