Thirty-seven students participated in the 2019 Ledger & Quill Case Competition, hosted by the School of Accountancy & MIS in September. Assistant Professor Christine Gimbar led and administered the case, which focused on a marketing company whose client is eager to reinvent its image for a younger customer base. Participants analyzed revenue recognition standards for the payment terms of the company’s transactions.
“Revenue is arguably the most important account in financial statements and is always assumed to be high risk in an audit setting,” says Gimbar. “We wanted to provide students with an opportunity to delve into the revenue recognition rules and understand how revenue is determined for complex transactions.”
Nine teams delivered 10-minute presentations before a panel of judges consisting of accounting professionals and professors. The finalists presented their results to John O’Connor (BUS ’86), partner at Plante Moran; Jim Robbs (BUS ’80), managing partner at Sassetti; and Matthew Stern and Deni Cikurel, assistant professors at the school.
“The case demonstrated to students that accounting is not always black-and-white, that there are judgment calls to be made, even when applying the standards,” says Gimbar. “Reading the standard, applying it to the case and deciding on a solution is not easy, and students are required to defend their solution as they would in a real-world client scenario.”
The students from the winning teams were Iqra Ansari, Abdul Feroz, Sarah Feroz, Jakub Parzygnat and Melissa Solares. “What I liked most about the case was the real-world application,” says Solares, a sophomore in the Strobel Accountancy program. “While working on the problem, it really felt like something I would have to do in my future career.”
The Ledger & Quill case competition is held each fall, allowing students to put their analytical, communication and critical thinking skills to the test, apply their accounting knowledge to real world examples, and develop public speaking and group collaboration skills that prepare them to be better professionals in the accounting world.
Case competitions are a great way for students to showcase their skills in a way that prepares them for client work and professional interactions in the future.”
Jim Robbs, Managing Partner
Sassetti LLC
By Bartlomiej Lichon