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The Author

I am an accounting professional actively seeking the Certified Public Accountant (CPA) designation. Disclaimer: This blog site is published by and reflects the personal views of Narcisse Dansou, in his individual capacity. It does in no way represent the views of his employer. The author assumes no responsibility for errors, omissions, or damages, caused from the use of the information contained herein.

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Business News Outlets for the Millennial Generation

| Last updated on February 27th, 2011 by | Filed under: Words to the Wise | 3 comments have been submitted - join the conversation!

During my years in college, I was very struck by the fact that very few of my peers kept up to date with the then current business news events. I would often find myself sitting in classrooms chucked full of students cluelessly staring at the instructor as she waited for a feedback after bringing up a current or recent business news event. Would one of these instructors have spoken about a reality TV like The Real World from MTV, she would undoubtedly have gotten a more enthusiastic response from the majority of students siting in her lecture. This is typical to our generation: the Millennial Generation or Generation Y.  We grew up with computers along with TVs in our bedrooms therefore most of us are more in tune  with entertainment related media programming than we are with the news media programming in general. I personally did not have a TV and computer to my  name until my first year in college. That along with the manner with which my siblings and I were brought up have somewhat insulated me from the assault of the show business media on Generation Next. I remember I was barely a teenager when I started reading newspapers and news magazines as well as watching the nightly news and documentaries.  It is to be noted that without my dad’s involvement it would have been nearly impossible for me to make any sense out of  all the serious issues I was being exposed to at the time.  He always made every effort to speak in a tongue I understood whenever I quizzed him on stories I read or watched that surpassed my level of comprehension. Since those formative years, keeping up with current events in general and business news in particular has become part of my daily routine.  As a result, I became a more complete business student than I could have been otherwise. Because of the variety of business stories I came across over the years preceding then covering my college life, I could easily relate to the topics that were being discussed in my business courses. Nowadays, most of the business news information I get is served to me via the web.  What else would one expect, I am a member of the Net Generation. Because our generation has a tendency to almost live on the web, I am going to recommend several web based business news outlets that an undergraduate business student can visit couple of times a day to keep abreast of current business news events. Continue reading Business News Outlets for the Millennial Generation

| First published on April 27th, 2010 by | Filed under: Words to the Wise | 3 comments have been submitted - join the conversation!

Study Habits for the Average Accounting Student

| Last updated on July 3rd, 2011 by | Filed under: Audit and Assurance, Financial Accounting, Managerial Accounting, Words to the Wise | 5 comments have been submitted - join the conversation!

Succeeding in any field of study requires the use of a solid strategy and accounting is no exception. As an undergraduate student in accounting, I many times had classmates in my accounting courses that would complain about their inability to consistently achieve above average exam grades. In response, I would ask  them to outline their strategy for tackling accounting courses. In 9 out 10 cases, they had no clearly defined strategy and that’s exactly what I call a recipe for failure. Successful studies in the field of accounting require a structured approach. While I never did exceptionally well in college, I was however able to do better than average in all my accounting classes because I developed and adopted effective learning habits very early on. Before going any further, I would like to mention that the accounting study tips I am about to share with the whole world are not a one size fits all. You are thereby invited to tweak them as you so fit so you can achieve optimum results. With the disclaimer out of the way, let’s take a look together at the study habits that enabled me to fare better than most throughout each of my accounting classes. These learning habits were organized in four chronological phases: before the lecture, during the lecture, after the lecture, and before the test. Continue reading Study Habits for the Average Accounting Student

| First published on April 21st, 2010 by | Filed under: Audit and Assurance, Financial Accounting, Managerial Accounting, Words to the Wise | 5 comments have been submitted - join the conversation!

US GAAP to IFRS Migration: Reframing the Debate

| Last updated on July 3rd, 2011 by | Filed under: Financial Accounting, Words to the Wise | 3 comments have been submitted - join the conversation!

For a decade or so, there has been quite a lot of talk in the US about a possible transition from U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) to International Reporting Standards (IFRS) with regard to U.S. publicly traded companies. Up to this point, most of the discussions on the subject have been about assessing the merits of such a change. As usual, some people are for it while others aren’t. Because I am still in the process of gathering the facts on the possible ramifications of the adoption or non-adoption of IFRS by the  U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), I find myself incapable of formulating an opinion on this issue. There is however plenty of literature about the subject available online therefore I urge you to conduct your own investigation. From the little I have learned so far, it is no longer a matter of if but when the SEC will require US publicly traded companies to report under IFRS. I am saying this because the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) announced not too long ago that starting with the year 2011, the CPA exam will test the candidate’s knowledge on IFRS and International Auditing Standards (IAS). Continue reading US GAAP to IFRS Migration: Reframing the Debate

| First published on April 12th, 2010 by | Filed under: Financial Accounting, Words to the Wise | 3 comments have been submitted - join the conversation!

Earnings Management: The Dark Side of Financial Reporting

| Last updated on July 3rd, 2011 by | Filed under: Audit and Assurance, Financial Accounting | 9 comments have been submitted - join the conversation!

As I explained in my previous post, accrual accounting is not an exact science. Indeed,  a variety of assumptions and accounting estimates is used in arriving at the final earnings figures. In assessing the health of a company, lenders and investors alike almost always look at the quality of its earnings first. However, it is nearly impossible for a company to consistently report stellar periodical earnings over a long period of time. This is because a company’s business activities can be affected by changes in economic cycles, seasonal changes, new legislation, and other extraordinary events. In order to “normalize” the continuous succession of ebbs and flows in financial results characteristic of any  typical business, company managers, more often than not, resort to a practice known as earnings management. According to Healy and Wahlen (A review of the earnings management literature and its implications for standard setting’, Accounting Horizons, December 1999, pp. 365–383.), “earnings management” occurs when managers use judgment in financial reporting and in structuring transactions to alter financial reports to either mislead some stakeholders about the underlying economic performance of a company or influence contractual outcomes that depend on reported accounting numbers. In other words, earnings numbers are deliberately manipulated by management for the purpose of meeting company’s objectives whatever they might be. Continue reading Earnings Management: The Dark Side of Financial Reporting

| First published on April 4th, 2010 by | Filed under: Audit and Assurance, Financial Accounting | 9 comments have been submitted - join the conversation!