I began with my Statement of Changes in Equity as the video Maria has provided was the shortest and I though it would be best to build my confidence up slowly rather than diving into the harder statements, particularly the Income Statement which I had heard other students were having difficulty with.
When it came to separating my items into Comprehensive Income into Operarting and Financing I was very lucky as most of the items I had, Maria also had. Some items seemed obvious to me such as items surrounding tax. However I did struggle with items relating to “Joint ventures or associates”. I originally classified these items as Operating, however after discussions with one of my peers, Amanda Noyle, I decided to allocate these items to Financing. As Amanda pointed out to me my company’s financial statements (under a note) outline that “Group revenue represents interest income from loans granted to joint ventures and associates, dividends from other financial assets”. I understand this to mean that the income has been generated from the interest the company earns from loans they have granted – meaning this would be financial.
I found it useful to visit the group Facebook page and type in part of the name of items on my spreadsheet and read about what past and current students have allocated similarly names items to and their reason for doing so.
I was nervous about the linking Maria emphasised we had to do, but it was easier than I expected. I have learned lots of new excel skills while restating the financial statements. I learned how to use the Format Painter button which has proved to make it much quicker to format my financial statements.
The Statement of Changes in Equity took me about an hour to complete and I was feeling reasonably confident by the end of it. However, I think I could have used Martin’s study guide more to help me categories items. My biggest challenge was interpreting the notes associated with the items. Finding the notes was easy, but making sense of them was hard. I found myself saying in frustration “Ok but is it Operating or Financing?” after reading the notes a lot.
Next I tackled the Balance Sheet. Again, some items here were easy to separate. I had a few items which actually said “financial” or “bank” in their name. I also started to notice a connection to a couple of items on the SOCIE which made it easier to separate. For example, I noted that “Remeasurement of net defined benefit asset/liability” on the SOCIE and “Employee retirement benefit asset” on the Balance Sheet were related so I assigned them to the same category being Operating.
On problem I had with the Balance Sheet was that when I used Maria’s checks (OA + FA = Total Assets in original Balance Sheet and OL + FL = Total Liabilities in original Balance Sheet) I noticed that I did not have a row for either total on my original Balance Sheet. I tried adding the row and using formulae (=D49+D53 for 2018 for example) but it was putting other figures out of whack in the spreadsheet (because of other formulae I had put in different places). I spent about an hour trying to solve this problem before deciding against changing my original Balance Sheet to make it easier to perform the checks. I received full marks for my original Balance Sheet so I thought it must not be too important and my time could be better spent working on my restated Income Statement. I know that Maria and any of the other teachers would probably look at this and work it out in less than a minute, but I just could not fix it. I think this demonstrates my “developing” excel skills.
When I completed the Income Statement, I was surprised I did not have much trouble. I had a few equations/totals incorrect which made me scratch my head until I figured them out though mostly because I was using a + where it needed a – (Because I had NFI). I was unsure whether I was completing the tax section correctly because my percentages of cash out of operational revenue were so large and Maria’s were not. However, once I started looking at other students work I noticed some were also the same. I asked a couple of peers what they thought and they said it looked fine.
Once I was finished my first draft, I uploaded it to my blog and shared the link to Facebook. When I received my feedback from Becx Bamford she pointed out I had a discrepancy in my Balance Sheet when she did the checks. I had to print out the restated and original and sit down and cross items off one by one until I found that I had left off “Interest in Leasehold Land for own use under finance leases”. Once I added this into my restated Balance sheet everything balanced again.
I completed my Restated Financial Statements around New Year and then did not look at them for a week or so. I wanted to check them with fresh eyes so as I was completing a feedback form for another student, I completed a feedback form for myself as well. I used all the checks Maria suggested and as far as I can tell everything is balancing.
Overall, I found this assessment very challenging. A few times I sat down to work on it and if I was not in the right headspace, I was useless. I needed to be 100% focused to work on it. I was a nervous wreck the final time I completed all the checks, I was so terrified I was going to find a mistake and have to start again because I couldn’t remember why or how I did something. However, once I was “in the zone” and achieving progress I really enjoyed it. A few times I sat down in the morning to work on it and it was lunchtime before I knew it.
Make it Account 