Assessment 2 current progress:

My current progress for The second assessment for ACCT11059 is below, I don't believe I can post my spreadsheet on it (for steps 2 and 4), but step 2 is done, and step 4 is about 50% completed at the time of posting.

Step 1: KCQs – Chapter 6

1.      “Customers must receive something of higher value to them than the price of the firm’s products or services.” The concept of valuing the worth of something yourself to determine whether or not it is worth purchasing is a prominent concept in many aspects of life that I have noticed, and would assume others also have included, as opposed to letting the business make the value judgement, and simply following along with that.

It seems to me (through various conversations I’ve heard and news articles I’ve read in the past) that where most firms (in particular big brands like Woolworths and Coles) will value something very highly, most people would say that most products are significantly too expensive, even with inflation and the current war going on. Hence, the idea of valuing products and services on your own decisions and perceptions is something that (while widely implemented already, from what I know) we could all benefit from doing more of.

2.      “Understanding the relationships of a firm’s costs to various aspects of a firm’s activities is critical” The concept of urgency, while I understand and congratulate those who can comply, is one I’ve always been utterly perplexed and frankly quite disgusted by.

I understand that our time is limited, and so having a sense of urgency makes for getting more done in given time frames. But perhaps it’s the lack of complying I did when I was young, which has grown more in my teen years, but I utterly loathe urgency; the sense of fear and anxiety it provides me often makes for a significantly harder experience with whatever it is I’m trying to achieve. For example, say I have to submit a document in 14 days, I’ll do awfully, but remove that limit and I can get it done in less time. Maybe it’s just a me thing, but each time I reflect on my work I realise more and more how much the sense of urgency limits what I can do through anxiety.

3.      “other people’s money” Something I’ve recently realised doesn’t make much sense, is the idea that everything had an origin point of some description. Money, for example; the money in my wallet is “my money”, but it used to be John’s money, or Sarah’s, it wasn’t always mine. Before me it could’ve been a bank, and before the bank it could’ve been an elderly woman, and before her it could’ve been a friend. Does that make the money in my wallet, a random elderly woman’s friend’s money?

I’m sure all money had an origin, as all things have, but to say a business spends “other peoples’ money” is ignorant of the fact that money doesn’t have an owner, because it goes from one person to the next with the snap of your fingers, and then it’s owner changes, so why isn’t the money called the firm’s money? If I were to guess, I’d say that people just don’t like how much money some business have, and try to cope with it by saying it’s other people’s money, but they couldn’t tell you that if you gave them $20 that the money isn’t theirs, if I were to guess.

4.      “managers need to know a lot more about a firm’s profitability” The sheer amount of work managers have to do according to these textbook chapters is unfathomable to me. In my experience (my quite limited experience, I admit), managers don’t do much more than “hey do this, stop touching that and put this away”, so hearing from the textbook that what’s supposed to happen is mountainous levels of work in attempts to manage figures; the actual reality of the business, makes me wonder whether the transferring of theory to practice is muddying the message somewhat, or whether I simply have no experience with the “right” managers.

Even still, hearing the sheer responsibility of managers gives me much more appreciation for them that I otherwise wouldn’t have considered necessary. To literally help keep the firm running, looking at the figures of the business’ life and try to contribute ways in which to keep the business running as optimally as possible would inevitably be quite extreme.

5.      “By influencing and driving decisions made in a business.” After seeing in chapter 1.1 that the numbers can create reality, and not knowing what that meant (but rather, thinking it was quite wrong), seeing this follow up 5 chapters later brings quite the closure, and I finally understand what it meant.

6.      “This can ... create a great short-term incentive to overproduce to inventory ... This characteristically leads to month-, quarter- and year-end production spurts, production-planning problems, excess inventory ... and stale, discounted product pushed onto the customer.”

As much as I’m sure the ellipses are there for removing excess or unnecessary words in the quote, I feel as though to quote someone and then leave out parts in the middle goes against the point of quoting them. I tend to not follow half-quotes or sayings that have been manipulated, so I won’t be following a letter that the quote listed says, as it has evidently been tampered with for one reason or another.

Step 6 – Chapter 8 KCQs

1.      “Vacillating people seldom succeed.” The concept of decisiveness being so significant to businesses seems so simple and engrained in common sense, but then reading how significant it is for one to be decisive in a business struck me as something unknown. That is, despite knowing that sitting on decisions would hinder business, seeing in words the impact it can have on firms was something I’ve never actively considered.

2.      “This should help us make better decisions with better outcomes” A (for lack of better word) trope I love in any medium is hearing advice that seems specific to a niche interest, for example, ‘always check your engine before and after long trips’ but then finding out that it is advice you can apply to all aspects of life (in the example’s case, check your health before and after tricky times).

“Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.” Goes into this too. Sure, in this context it means that decision making is important with all stages of a business’ life, but it’s easy to identify that that can be said about almost anything, for example: building, demolishing, serving, teaching, responding, and aiding.

“Focusing on our contribution is also very useful in all aspects of our lives.” This also goes into this point; for a textbook about accounting, which is not something that everyone or even a lot of people are interested in (in my experience), there is a lot of wisdom in this textbook’s varying chapters that can be utilised in multiple different aspects of life, not just accounting and by no means just business.

3.      The general perspective of time seems quite interesting to me. It seems that most people seem to think that the future is the future, and that when it comes, we will be living in the future: “My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.” – Charles F. Kettering

However people seem to not be realising (or I am looking into this far too deeply) that by the time the future comes, it will be the present, and we will (as we always have) be living in the present, the future then will still be 5, 10 or even 20 years away, as it is today.

4.      Seeing so many different acronyms is quite overwhelming. I’m not done the chapter and I’ve seen so many like “NPV” “IRR” and “ARR” and remembering them all is quite a taxing procedure.

I obviously think it’s quite interesting then that I’m quite familiar with slang acronyms; ones like “hru” “wyd” and “idc” which I use in my day to day life (mostly over the phone, I don’t say “idc” when talking in person, I simply say “I don’t care”).

Perhaps this is a classic example of my mind taking in information I want, and culling (or trying to cull) the information I “don’t want” or at least don’t have such an easy time understanding.

5.      “Ever notice that ‘what the hell’ is always the right decision?” Before reading into the part of the chapter that follows this, I want to state that I agree so heavily with this; don’t want to act? “what the hell would I do that for?”, want to act? “What the hell could go wrong”

Obviously that’s not quite the nitty-gritty of it, but the basic idea that certain answers (which usually can have both negative and positive connotations) can be used to answer any decision is a fun idea I occasionally tackle with, and enjoy the process of (that is, the process of thinking about it, and actually doing it).