An Accounting Capstone Workbook & Case Study

As with any undertaking in a business context, any solution should be a response to a recognizable problem. Solutions that are created with the idea that a problem will be found later are futile and ineffective on the face. As instructors in various accounting schools, the authors had struggled to find an effective and efficient means to instruct learners in an Accounting Capstone course. The only alternative to date had been to require the re-use of textbooks used in foundational courses. However, it was recognized that students entering an Accounting Capstone course had significant exposure to all of the underlying courses required to enter the Capstone. Therefore, replicating information already covered extensively was discovered to be unnecessarily repetitive and costly for the student. In fact, the only solution available to date had been to assemble a customized textbook that used various chapters from four or more textbooks. Not only is that inefficient, it has proven to be ineffective and costly for student learning.

One particularly intractable problem has been integrating time sensitive material. Specifically, taxation and payroll textbooks are revised every year. That creates additional pressure on Subject Matter Experts, course designers, and curriculum managers. The annual updating of course materials is burdensome in terms of time and cost.

To solve the multi-book problem and the annual revision pressure, this workbook seeks to replace all of the customized books, and avoid the necessity for annual updates. Two basic assumptions are manifest in this workbook.

First, it is assumed that all students entering an Accounting Capstone have already had sufficient exposure to all of the underlying course material. Upper-level accounting students should be familiar with the terms and principles used here.

Second, we assume that tax tables and payroll withholdings will change every year.

Therefore, all time-sensitive tax tables and payroll information is developed in this workbook to be time-neutral. That is, any requirement related to taxation or payroll[…] tables will be coordinated to access the latest information at www.irs.gov.

The authors are primarily hopeful that the effort to develop this workbook will result in improved student learning. Secondary goals of effective use of time and efficient course design would be useful outcomes, as well.