PART 1: TEACHING SUGGESTIONS This part of the manual consists of teaching aids and suggestions. The information is designed to provide you technical information and offer suggestions for making the best educational use of Integrated Accounting 7e in your classroom. The material presented covers each topic in the same sequence as presented in the text-workbook. Required Hardware Integrated Accounting 7e comes complete on one standard compact disk. To use the software, you need a processor running in the Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, Me, XP, Vista, or 7 environment. In addition, a hard disk drive with at least 15MB of available disk space, and a CD drive is required for installation. A printer is optional but highly recommended. Technical Support South-Western/Cengage Learning s Technical Support Team is available to help you with any technical problems you may have with this media product. http://www.cengage.com/support/ If you identify a problem, please check your hardware to make sure it is working properly. If the hardware is functioning correctly, please visit the Cengage Support Website to communicate via the Live Help Online Form. Features of the Software The Integrated Accounting 7e software makes use of the standard Windows user interface that utilizes drop-down menus, a toolbar, movable overlapping windows, mouse support, on-screen help, and other Windows conventions. Because this software uses the standard Windows interface, visual and functional consistency is achieved within and across Windows-based applications. The techniques and terminology your students will learn in their text-workbook and by working with the software can be applied to other Windows-based software packages. This facilitates the learning process and greatly reduces the need to retrain for each new application that your students will work with in the future. The Integrated Accounting 7e software that accompanies this text contains integrated software designed to handle general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable, financial statement analysis, fixed assets, purchase order processing, sales order processing, budgeting, 1
2 Part 1 Teaching Suggestions inventory, and payroll. In addition, data from the Integrated Accounting 7e software may be copied and pasted into most modern spreadsheet programs (e.g., Excel) for further analysis and processing for a variety of other accounting related applications. Likewise, reports generated by the software may be copied and pasted into most modern word processing programs (e.g., Word, Works) for use in company reporting or presentations. Your students are not required to have access to spreadsheet or word processing software in order to use Integrated Accounting 7e. Spreadsheet and word processing activities are optional; however, if you have this software, it is recommended that your students complete these optional activities. Integrated Accounting 7e has been designed specifically for use in an educational environment. The software has been designed to include many of the same features and capabilities of comparable commercial accounting packages without many of the complexities and without the need to store the voluminous amounts of data required by a typical commercial package. For example, in a business it would be important to maintain such customer data as mailing address, shipping address, shipping instructions, discounts offered, credit limit, and sales history. In the Integrated Accounting 7e software, only the customer name is required. In an educational environment, it is often not practical to require students to enter such large amounts of data (computer resources and classroom time are often too scarce). For control purposes, commercial software packages often do not allow journal entries to be corrected. Once a journal entry has been posted, it cannot be changed. Corrections to journal entries are done by making additional, correcting entries. Because Integrated Accounting 7e has been specifically designed for use in the educational environment, corrections to journal entries are allowed. During data entry, list windows for general ledger accounts, vendors, customers, employees, purchase orders, purchase invoices, cash payments, sales invoices, cash receipts, and fixed assets are available that allow data from these windows to be selected without the necessity of keying account (or other control) numbers, thus saving keying time and possible keying errors. List and Find options are available for all transactions that allow students to locate previously entered transactions for corrections or deletion. Students may store their data files on their own data disks or in their own folders on a hard disk or network. The student has a great deal of flexibility in how often the data files are stored as well as what name to assign to the file. Therefore, it is possible to store multiple versions of the same work-in-progress data file.
Part 1 Teaching Suggestions 3 Setup options are available as part of the Setup Accounting System window and allow tailoring of the accounting system. The system can be set up so that the income statement includes columns for the month and year or just one column for the fiscal period. Options are available that allow users to decide whether checks and statements are to be prepared manually or by the computer. A setup option allows for processing of a departmentalized business. If departmentalization is selected, department numbers will be included on accounts and departmentalized financial statements will be available. If the type of business involves inventory and uses a merchandising business with CGS account, the user can select the method of inventory valuation the computer will use in a perpetual inventory system. A journal wizard can be used to create special general ledger, purchases, cash payments, sales, and cash receipts journals to more efficiently handle data entry activities. Fixed Assets features are available. The software can store information about a company s assets, generate depreciation schedules, generate monthly and yearly depreciation reports, and automatically update the general ledger with journal entries resulting from depreciation. Inventory, purchase order processing, sales order processing, and payroll also contain seamless integration that automatically updates the general ledger with journal entries resulting from the processing. Five commonly used planning tools for personal and business applications have also been provided. A comprehensive, context-sensitive Help system is available for access at any time. An on-screen calculator can be used to make computations, the results of which can be pasted into data entry windows. A Student Solution Checker feature is included to permit the students to check their completed end-of-chapter A problems against answer key files provided with the Integrated Accounting 7e software. For Distance Learning or online users, completed problem solution files may be sent to their instructors as email attachments. Upon receipt of the student's solution files, the Inspector 7e software (that accompanies this manual) may be used by the instructor to check the student's completed problem solution files, and generate detailed reports of the results. Capabilities have been added to the Inspector 7e software that enable the instructor to copy and paste the contents of the report into the student's original email and then send it back as a reply.
4 Part 1 Teaching Suggestions Features of the Text-Workbook Each chapter begins with a list of learning objectives and key terms used in the chapter. Following the learning objectives and key terms is textual information presented in easy to follow operational instructions with example illustrations. A sample computer problem follows the textual information, providing detailed step-by-step instructions for completing a computer problem using the material presented in the chapter. At any time while using the software, the Help system may be accessed to further assist the student. Following the detailed step-by-step sample problem are student exercises and two additional computer problems. The text is designed to make learning and using the Integrated Accounting 7e software easy, and it allows students to locate reference information quickly and easily. Some of the features used in the text to facilitate student learning include: 1. Drop-down menus, menu items, toolbar buttons, navigation buttons, and other features used to control the operation of the software (e.g. buttons, check boxes, grid cells, text boxes, lists, etc.) are discussed in detail when they are used throughout the text workbook. 2. Each of the windows with their associated tabs, dialog boxes, etc. used by the software to enter data, make selections, process data, and so on, is pictured with example data, illustrations, and detailed explanations. 3. Useful illustrations and notes are provided throughout the text. 4. Illustrations showing completed data entry are provided. 5. Use of the Planning Tools for common personal and business applications are covered in the end-of-chapter problems of several chapters. 6. Detailed step-by-step operational procedures are provided throughout each chapter and in the Help system as a reference for completing the end-of-chapter problems. 7. Optional integrated spreadsheet and word processing activities are included in the end-ofchapter problems. 8. Optional Internet activities are provided at the end of each computer problem. 9. End-of-chapter A problems contain checkpoint information that may be accessed by clicking on the Info. button. The information will open in the student's default Internet browser. 10. All A problems (except in Chapters 8 and 11) include instructions that direct the student to use the Student Solution Checker software to check their work.
Part 1 Teaching Suggestions 5 System Capacities Because this is educational software, data storage capacities have been sacrificed for small file size, speed of operation, and program execution. Enough capacity has been provided to permit the solution of all problems in the text-workbook as well as many problems for other textbooks and simulations. The capacities are: Chart of Accounts - 120 Vendors - 125 Customers - 125 Journal Entries - 600 Fixed Assets - 50 Employees - 50 Payroll Transactions - 600 Inventory Stock Items - 390 Inventory Transactions - 400 Purchase Orders - 50 Purchase Invoices - 50 Sales Invoices - 50 Estimated Completion Time Field test results have shown that the approximate time for completion of the text-workbook using the software is as follows: 28-32 hours per student for reading the text and completing both the student exercises and the audit questions. 8-12 hours per student of actual hands-on time using the computer for data entry and processing. 10-12 hours per student to complete the three comprehensive computer problems. Opening Balances The install CD includes opening balance and problem A answer key files. These opening balance and key files are installed to the hard disk in the same directory as the Integrated Accounting 7e software. Opening balance files and answer key files supplied with the software are restricted to read-only attributes as a precaution so that students do not write over them. If you wish to remove one or more of these files, and aren t sure how to change the attribute, please consult your manual (under the topic of attributes or file properties), or talk to your computer coordinator.