Analytical Capstone Project

Analytical Capstone Project
Paper , Order, or Assignment Requirements

Accounting Information Systems
Assignment: Analytics Project

Overview
Students are expected to apply relevant concepts and tools to complete a data analytics project. You will work as part of the analytics (smaller) team formed during the second week of class. Only one submission per team is required for each project.

Required Tasks
You will be using Computer Assisted Audit Techniques (CAATs) to evaluate travel expenses for Tampa Electronics in an attempt to find potential fraud, policy violations, or other anomalies based on the data available. To report your findings, you will create an executive summary and detailed report to hand to management.

The case refers to the possibility of using Microsoft Excel. You are welcome to use whatever tool you wish when completing the case, but I suggest Microsoft Excel. It is the tool I will use for in-class examples, so if you decide to use something else you would need to learn it on your own. Excel is the only tool I will officially support in office hours or in class.

1. Read the Tampa Electronics Case that is posted. It provides background on the company, the audit task, and guidance on what steps should be taken in the audit. There is an accompanying file, also loaded that contains the data that you will be performing fraud and compliance tests on.

2. Your will need to perform and report the results of all of the final list of tests that we generate. This list will be posted.

3. For the project deliverables, you will generate an executive summary for Mr. Yorke, CFO of Tampa Electronics (section 1 of the report), create a structured summary of the tests and findings (section 2), and end the report with a more detailed description of the findings and the data analysis procedures you undertook (section 3). These sections are described in more detail next:

Section 1. Executive Summary
The executive summary is your first impressive and should be written with particular care. It should be something you would be proud to hand to your boss’s boss’s boss with your name on it. When grading, I will be most critical of the writing in this section. For this project, the executive summary should include:
1. Introduce your group and thank management for the opportunity.
2. Explain what you were asked to do (briefly describe the analytics project).
3. Explain the basics of how you did the project (where you got the data, what tools/techniques you used to complete the project).
4. Provide a brief description of what you believe to be the most concerning results of your testing (what you think the executives should be most concerned about).
5. End the executive summary by describing what is in the rest of the report (where they can go in the report to see a summary and more details about the findings and your procedures).

Section 2. Test Results Summary
In section two of the report create a summary table of the tests you performed and the results:
Test # Title of the Test Summary of Test Results
40 Testing that assignment instructions are followed 3 instruction violations found
• Bert did not include all of the required elements in the executive summary
• Ernie did not produce the summary of findings exactly as described
• Super Grover 2.0 did not describe what the findings likely mean and was inconsistent in the level of detail provided on how the test was performed.
41 Testing how many awesome students there are in my class 44 students in this class (the entire population) are awesome

The table you create should have three columns:
1. The first column should contain a test number (1, 2, 3, etc).
2. The second column should include a short descriptive title of the test you conducted.
3. The third column should be a summary of the findings for that test. If there are five or fewer findings in a particular test, include a list of the findings within the table (ie names, dates). if there are more than five results, please just put the total number of findings.
a. Hint: Be specific, do not give results in generalities. Every answer should be quantified with a specific number included.
b. The accuracy of your findings will be determined by a review of this section of the report. You must have a clear and correct answer here to get points for a particular test.

Section 3. Testing Details
Section three of your report should be a detailed description of the steps you took to perform each test and a listing of the findings:
1. Begin each test description with the corresponding test number that you used in the summary table you created in section 2.
2. Next, give a concise summary of the findings for that test (ie we found 5 employees that took a total of 20 trips where….).
3. Next, briefly discuss what you think the findings mean (do you think this is a strong indicator of fraud, or could there be plausible alternative explanations)?
4. Next, create a description of the steps to took to perform each test. The description should be detailed enough to replicate, but can assume an advanced knowledge of excel procedures. You can leverage the examples used in class as a rough guide for how detailed to make the procedure descriptions. You may do this in a narrative (paragraph) or bullet-point format – whichever you believe to be most effective.
5. Finally, present the (nicely formatted) raw findings and/or some graphical depiction of the findings. If your raw findings consist of a list of more than 20 findings, please only include the first 20 in your report and state the number that were omitted from the report.

Evaluation
Your grade will be based on completion of all required steps, the accuracy and completeness of the findings, and the quality of the write up. You must do all required tests as agreed to by the class. A component of the project involves intensive writing. You will probably not need to use outside sources in your write-up, but if you do – you must follow appropriate citation practices. As always, academic honesty and integrity will be monitored and enforced. You are instructed to perform all work and the writeup within your individual group and should not share any part of your project with any other group. All members of a group are responsible for the work product that is turned in, do not compromise on the integrity of your work as it can affect more people than just you.

 

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