BSc (Hons) in Applied Accounting

FINANCIAL NOTES SUMMARY OF REQUIREMENTS

The Programme Regulations for the BSc Project require students to use the latest 3
years financial reports that are available, or will be available, for their target company
and comparator at the start of the submission period that they are intending to submit in.

If the results are not going to be published in time for students to include them in their
reports, then students should use the previous 3 year's results.
Note: The Programme Director has advised that any Company results that are
published (in any form) less than 90 days before the start of submission period do
not have to be used.
Please note that if the marker feels that more recent results were available in sufficient
time to be used students may either lose marks or fail.

Students are required to select a suitable comparator company or the industry average,
and should analyse at least one year and up to three years results - more marks will be
given for a more extensive comparison.

If students choose companies and comparators that do not have similar financial year
ends, that is no problem and students will not be penalised for such a decision. However
the process of comparing unlike time periods has to be addressed correctly.

There are many acceptable techniques for making accounting periods comparable.
Students will need to consider the limitations of any such technique of course, especially if
the company's activity is seasonal. For example: Were the additional months during a
period of relatively high or low annual activity?

Articles from the financial press or from analysts are suitable sources of information. We
would normally expect free sources of information to be sufficient, especially if the
reporting indicates events and decisions which have had an impact on the company's
results.

Date printed: Friday, 17 June 2016

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BSc (Hons) in Applied Accounting

SOURCE OF DATA
For a financial topic (especially Topics 8 & 15) it is acceptable to rely entirely on secondary
information. Primary information, such as obtained from interviews and questionnaires, is
often neither easily accessible nor very useful.

However, effective analysis of the business and financial performance of a company will
necessarily entail looking for other sources of information than relying entirely on annual
reports. Analyst comment, financial press, etc will help give an insight into the events and
decisions which have affected the company's performance.

The University often recommends publications like the Economist, Time, Harvard Business
Review or The Week, as sources to provide background information on-line.

Topics 8 and 15 new Industry Sector requirements:

All students submitting a project on topic 8 or topic 15 in November 2016 or May
2017 MUST use sector specific organisations, based on the Industry
Classification Benchmark (ICB). These sectors are:
Airlines (Passenger airline operators)
Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology (2 subsectors)
Mobile telecommunications (service providers)

Please go to: http://www.icbenchmark.com/ICBDocs/Structure_Defs_English.pdf for more

detailed descriptions of these sectors and sub-sectors
These sectors will apply to students submitting for the first time or for students changing
topic or company in November 2016 (Period 33) and May 2017 (Period 34).
Sectors for future periods will be released in the Information Pack each year and will cover
the following two submission periods. The main focus of your project research must be an
analysis / evaluation of the project topic area issues in the context of your chosen
organisation.

Date printed: Friday, 17 June 2016

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