MBA and Accounting

I just finished my bacholer's and started the MSA program and my advice to you is to make sure you read the chapter's assigned and do all of the homework.

For me personally, the best way to learn accounting is by doing the problems as repetitive as they may seem.

I also transfered from the Comp Sci side, and your natural tendency to be a problem solver (finding out how to do the next thing in your program) should help you very well in accounting.

Logical. I just have to pop a few RItalin, down a Red Bull and plug away. I just wish there was a chart I could memorize that lists what everything was.

Read your course material. This is also my first class in accounting (Financial Accounting I). It is not difficult for someone who has worked with math and logical operations. Just remember the accounting equation and how debits and credits affect both sides of it.

after working w/the different accounts for a while, you will just get to know them....study a typical balance sheet and income ststement for

15 min per night, over a week or two...pretty soon you will notice the layout and pattern...trust the force......luke....cash/ar/prepaid assets......ap, notes payable, taxes payable...liabilities, etc...good luck !!!

snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com wrote:

A quick and dirty way to think of it:

Future obligations == liabilities Future benefits == assets Difference between the two ("leftovers") at a given time == equity (or sometimes called "net assets")

Balance sheet items accumulate, Income Statement items "reset" every accounting period (a quarter, a year, etc.) under examination.

In procedural programming terms, think of a for loop. (I'll use perl :)

$IS_counterpart = 0; $month = 0;

# First year - everything starts at zero for ( $BS_item = 0; $date < 12; $month++ ) { $IS_counterpart++; $BS_item++; }

# Second year - Income Statement resets to zero, Balance Sheet does not for ( $IS_counterpart = $month = 0; $month < 12; $month++ ) { $IS_counterpart++; $BS_item++; }

End of the first year, the Balance Sheet item and its Income Statement counterpart are equal, because you are only looking at one year of data. Reset the month counter and Income Statement counter part, and at the end of the first year, they are different.

Or, in non-programming terms, think of the tripmeter on your car's odometer. You drive around some, and at the end of the week (which happens to fall on 12/31) your trip meter (and odometer) reads 200 miles. You have, at this point, driven 200 miles for the year, in total, and your car also has, in total 200 miles on it. You reset the trip meter, and go enjoy New Year's Eve. Party's over, and it's now New Year's Day. You were the designated driver, so you drive home, which is

20 miles away, and take the rest of the week as vacation, driving 500 miles round trip to see the relatives.

If you freeze that moment in time and look at "financial statements" of your car, the odometer (accumulator of mileage over all time) reads 720 miles (the first 200, plus 20 home plus 500 to see relatives). The trip meter reads 520 (you reset it before the NYE party, at 12/31, remember?)

If you had looked at the car's financials before the party, it would have been 200 miles accumulated, and 200 for the year.

The driving before 12/31 is one for loop, the driving after is another for loop. That BS item accumulates the results of ALL for loops (all years/accounting periods) and the IS item has a scope limited to just the for loop (just that year/accounting period).

Anyhow.

Enough repeated exposure, and it'll make perfect sense. It's a very logical way of looking at how to arrange economic data and its changes :)

-Holly, former-IT

Holy Shit bones.. That makes sense!

I'm in panic mode now because I know I bombed my mid term and I have some catching up to do.

Try this wikipedia link

snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com wrote:> Holly J. Sommer wrote:> > A quick and dirty way to think of it:> >