Chapter 4 Cash Flow and Financial Planning 63
Spreadsheet Exercise
The answer to Chapter 4’s ACME Company spreadsheet problem is located on the Instructor’s Resource Center at
www.pearsonhighered.com/irc under the Instructor’s Manual.
Group Exercise
Group exercises are available on www.myfinancelab.com.
The focus of this chapter’s exercise is each group’s fictitious firm and its asset depreciation. Students are
asked to first visit the IRS’s website and retrieve information regarding depreciation of property as described in
publication number 946. Using this information each group is asked to provide examples of property depreciation
germane to their firm.
The second set of objectives centers on financial planning. Each group is asked to evaluate their shadow firm’s
statement of cash flows over the recent past and explain any changes. This effort is then paired with similar work
on each group’s fictitious firm. Short- and long-term planning are next derived from the corporation’s strategy
section of its annual report and applied to the fictitious firm. Cash budgeting for the fictitious firm and pro forma
statements from the shadow firm conclude this assignment.
The best advice here is for students to keep it simple. Impress upon them the rapidly increasing complexity of any
budgeting process as the number of accounts is increased. Following the text’s examples and using the information
from the shadow firm should be encouraged.
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