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Virtual accounting lab model at the Faculty of Accounting - Dai Nam University
Posted date 27/03/2018
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Posted date 27/03/2018
5.146 view
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With the motto "learning goes hand in hand with practice", the Faculty of Accounting - Dai Nam University has deployed and completed the model "Virtual Accounting Practice Room".
Dr. Le The Anh
With the motto "learning goes hand in hand with practice" , the Faculty of Accounting - Dai Nam University has deployed and completed the model of " Virtual Accounting Practice Room " . This model has helped students proactively approach the practical work of accounting, gain a deeper understanding of the legal regulations on finance, taxes, accounting software and especially master Excel. The training linking theory and practice has contributed to improving the quality of training, closely connecting lecturers and students. At the same time, the innovation has made it easier for organizations and businesses to recruit accounting staff because accounting students of Dai Nam University have met the requirements of employers from the first recruitment.
1. OBJECTIVE
- Innovate teaching methods, linking theory with accounting practice;
- Create a theoretical training model closely linked to practice, helping students gradually get acquainted with and shape accounting work, and can help students take on additional accounting and tax jobs while still in school;
- Improve the quality of training in Accounting and Auditing, affirm the school's reputation and create a real difference from other universities;
- Students are fully equipped with practical knowledge to confidently do accounting work at businesses and economic organizations right after graduation.
2. CURRENT STATE OF ACCOUNTING - AUDITING TRAINING
The training programs of schools from vocational colleges to universities in Vietnam in general mainly stop at theory, the practical internship part in reality still has many limitations such as: students cannot find an internship place or if they find an internship place, they only have a basic approach, asking for data without a system for writing reports. Many students when doing internships only do it for the sake of it or "copy" to make reports without doing a real internship. Therefore, the quality of internship reports and graduation theses is often low. Graduating with a bachelor's degree, students are not confident in the job search process, do not know where to start accounting work, so they do not meet the requirements of employers.
Accounting - Auditing training is one of the fields that society is interested in, the number of training schools and students in this field accounts for a large proportion in the structure of training professions. But in reality, the human resources in this field are very lacking in accountants, accounting specialists with professional ethics and high professional qualifications. Meanwhile, students and graduates in this field are still unemployed or have to work in a different field. So what is the cause of this contradiction?
Through a survey, many businesses nominally have accounting staff but in reality they can only do internal tasks and cannot do general accounting, and cannot prepare financial reporting systems. The work of preparing financial reports must be outsourced to professional organizations and individuals. This further confirms that the training of accounting students is still heavily theoretical and lacks practical professional skills.
From the above situation, I would like to present and analyze the main causes of the above conflicts, which originate from career orientation, training, training quality, and practical requirements of businesses for graduates as follows:
2.1. Theoretical training section
The theoretical training time is quite heavy, focusing on the Debit/Credit accounts of simple practical exercises given by the teacher. In the process of doing those exercises, students have not yet clarified the legality and accounting process because it lacks system and connection to the final product, which is the financial reporting system.
2.2. Practical part
In class, teachers have guided practice through small and large exercises to help students get acquainted with the work of accountants. However, those exercises are often simple, unsystematic and have many shortcomings:
- First, the practical exercises are not close to the reality of the business;
- Second, the set of practice documents is often incomplete and unscientific;
- Third, the practical accounting system is incomplete, unscientific and difficult to practice;
- Fourth, the financial reporting system does not provide detailed instructions on how to prepare and read financial reports;
- Fifth, the reporting system for VAT, CIT and other taxes does not have detailed instructions on how to prepare them;
- Sixth, not analyzing the important points of the report and the provisions of the law;
The teaching staff participating in the practical part are mostly part-time theoretical teachers who have not experienced practical accounting work at enterprises, so they cannot prepare practical documents that meet the requirements of enterprises, so the quality of the practical part is still limited. On the other hand, due to the financial regulations, one hour of practice is only calculated as half of a theoretical period, which is not attractive enough for lecturers to invest in research and practical surveys.
2.3. Actual internship situation before graduation upon graduation
Firstly, for students: Internships and practical work at businesses are a great opportunity for students to learn and apply the knowledge they have learned into practice, and at the same time, this is a good opportunity for students to accumulate experience for their careers. However, information about the financial situation and accounting books of businesses is very sensitive, this information is often kept highly confidential by businesses, so it is difficult for interns to access actual data of businesses. According to Associate Professor, Dr. Dang Van Thanh - Chairman of the Vietnam Association of Accountants and Auditors, interns often do not have access to work, sometimes only visit businesses a few times a week, and mainly do chores such as sweeping the room, making tea, washing dishes, etc. Therefore, students who are allowed to do internships are not given detailed instructions, the data provided is too old and unsystematic or the information is dishonest, making the results of the actual internship at the business not meet the requirements.
Second, regarding the teachers: The team of instructors is not evenly qualified. Some teachers are too highly qualified and specialize in research, so their practical work and graduation internship guidance are sometimes not close to the reality and level of the students. Some teachers instruct graduation internships but have never practiced in practice themselves, so their guidance only stops at general theory. The remaining few teachers who both teach and participate in practical work at businesses require students to do more practical reports, beyond the students' capacity, so they only attract studious students.
Thirdly, the way of evaluating the quality of writing reports and graduation internships is not really objective, still heavily influenced by prejudice and equalization, unrealistic encouragement leading to the situation where the next class looks at the previous class, internships are done carelessly and lack seriousness. Therefore, internships and writing graduation reports gradually become a formality to complete a course in the training program.
2.4. Updating legal documents in the financial sector Accounting - Auditing - Tax
Our Accounting - Auditing system and tax policies are in the process of being built and completed, so there are frequent changes such as: updating and upgrading software to support tax declaration, tax laws, tax reduction policies, tax payment extensions, etc. Therefore, each student upon graduation who wants to do well in their work at the enterprise, in addition to the above knowledge, students need to know and regularly update the current legal document system, what legal documents regulate their work, where to look up and search. This has been required by teachers, but students have not yet researched it systematically and thoroughly.
Based on the objective assessment of the current situation of internship and graduation thesis, the Faculty of Accounting has researched innovation by building a "Virtual Accounting Practice Room".
3. EXCEL SOLUTION - VIRTUAL ACCOUNTING LABORATORY
3.1. Overview of “Excel – Accounting Practice Room”
Excel is a very effective tool in Accounting - Auditing that has been used by many foreign companies while Vietnamese enterprises pay little attention to Excel. Especially for Auditors, proficient use of Excel in the auditing process is one of the skills required when participating in recruitment. Through surveying and analyzing the actual work in the accounting department of enterprises, Excel - Accounting Practice Room was researched, designed and implemented all accounting operations of the enterprise. The advantage of Excel - Accounting Practice Room compared to accounting software is that learners can design an accounting software by themselves using Excel. Thereby, learners have the ability to self-study and improve their professional expertise in a very short period of time. Learners can deeply understand accounting operations, simple data entry, and quickly and accurately summarize data according to the requirements of managers.
An outstanding advantage of applying Excel accounting software to accounting work is that the worker can edit common errors himself, while specialized software requires waiting for the supplier to process, which takes a lot of time. Specialized software suppliers can support faster troubleshooting by using the Internet, but this support method can easily cause the accounting information of the business to be spread out. Therefore, applying Excel accounting software to serve the teaching and training of working skills for students majoring in Accounting and Auditing is a solution that meets both theoretical and practical requirements.
Excel – Virtual Accounting Lab is divided into three parts:
Part 1 – Knowledge about Excel.
Students will study basic and advanced Excel knowledge, based on which they will build Accounting Software using Excel.
Part 2: Practice accounting on Excel.
- Learners are provided with a complete set of documents according to current accounting regulations for their internship;
- Learners practice designing accounting books (general ledger, detailed ledger) on Excel;
- Learners practice designing Financial Reporting systems on Excel;
- Learners are guided to practice creating a financial reporting system on the General Department of Taxation's HTKK software.
Part 3: Product set made on Excel.
- Documents are prepared and stored in accordance with accounting law;
- The set of accounting books is designed and implemented according to the actual operations of the enterprise and the provisions of accounting law;
- Financial statements are prepared according to the topics and regulations of accounting law;
- The VAT, corporate income tax and personal income tax reports have been prepared according to the assignment and tax management law regulations;
- Data on the established Excel accounting software will be used for all accounting operations of the enterprise in accordance with the prescribed regime;
The product set is researched and printed by students on Excel as a basis for evaluating students' learning results. Students can use the results made on Excel to supplement their job applications.
Part 4: Refer to results with specialized accounting software.
Based on the results of the practice on Excel, students use the set of documents that have been set up to practice on Misa accounting software to:
- Referencing results between practice on Excel and accounting software;
- Comparing and evaluating the usefulness between accounting on Excel and specialized accounting software helps learners understand more deeply the nature of accounting.
- Use a combination of Excel and specialized accounting software when implementing accounting work into practice at the enterprise.
Part 5: Accounting Game
Accounting game is the name of a practical part of students in the Virtual Accounting Department. To implement the accounting game, students are divided into groups of 4-5 people, each group is the accounting department of a business. Each student in the group is assigned to a specific job position in the accounting department. Students carry out transactions with other businesses, from the stages of creating documents, collecting and paying money, calculating salaries, accounting for accounting operations, preparing tax reports and creating a financial reporting system. In addition to improving students' professional skills, this part helps students practice teamwork skills and data protection and explanation skills.
At the end of the internship at the “Virtual Accounting Room”, each student must synthesize knowledge on a “mind map”. Students present the knowledge they have acquired to the evaluation board. The internship at the “Virtual Accounting Room” has helped students not only gain a deeper understanding of theoretical knowledge and practical working skills at organizations and businesses, but also practice honesty and ethics in the accounting profession./.
With the motto "learning goes hand in hand with practice" , the Faculty of Accounting - Dai Nam University has deployed and completed the model of " Virtual Accounting Practice Room " . This model has helped students proactively approach the practical work of accounting, gain a deeper understanding of the legal regulations on finance, taxes, accounting software and especially master Excel. The training linking theory and practice has contributed to improving the quality of training, closely connecting lecturers and students. At the same time, the innovation has made it easier for organizations and businesses to recruit accounting staff because accounting students of Dai Nam University have met the requirements of employers from the first recruitment.
1. OBJECTIVE
- Innovate teaching methods, linking theory with accounting practice;
- Create a theoretical training model closely linked to practice, helping students gradually get acquainted with and shape accounting work, and can help students take on additional accounting and tax jobs while still in school;
- Improve the quality of training in Accounting and Auditing, affirm the school's reputation and create a real difference from other universities;
- Students are fully equipped with practical knowledge to confidently do accounting work at businesses and economic organizations right after graduation.
2. CURRENT STATE OF ACCOUNTING - AUDITING TRAINING
The training programs of schools from vocational colleges to universities in Vietnam in general mainly stop at theory, the practical internship part in reality still has many limitations such as: students cannot find an internship place or if they find an internship place, they only have a basic approach, asking for data without a system for writing reports. Many students when doing internships only do it for the sake of it or "copy" to make reports without doing a real internship. Therefore, the quality of internship reports and graduation theses is often low. Graduating with a bachelor's degree, students are not confident in the job search process, do not know where to start accounting work, so they do not meet the requirements of employers.
Accounting - Auditing training is one of the fields that society is interested in, the number of training schools and students in this field accounts for a large proportion in the structure of training professions. But in reality, the human resources in this field are very lacking in accountants, accounting specialists with professional ethics and high professional qualifications. Meanwhile, students and graduates in this field are still unemployed or have to work in a different field. So what is the cause of this contradiction?
Through a survey, many businesses nominally have accounting staff but in reality they can only do internal tasks and cannot do general accounting, and cannot prepare financial reporting systems. The work of preparing financial reports must be outsourced to professional organizations and individuals. This further confirms that the training of accounting students is still heavily theoretical and lacks practical professional skills.
From the above situation, I would like to present and analyze the main causes of the above conflicts, which originate from career orientation, training, training quality, and practical requirements of businesses for graduates as follows:
2.1. Theoretical training section
The theoretical training time is quite heavy, focusing on the Debit/Credit accounts of simple practical exercises given by the teacher. In the process of doing those exercises, students have not yet clarified the legality and accounting process because it lacks system and connection to the final product, which is the financial reporting system.
2.2. Practical part
In class, teachers have guided practice through small and large exercises to help students get acquainted with the work of accountants. However, those exercises are often simple, unsystematic and have many shortcomings:
- First, the practical exercises are not close to the reality of the business;
- Second, the set of practice documents is often incomplete and unscientific;
- Third, the practical accounting system is incomplete, unscientific and difficult to practice;
- Fourth, the financial reporting system does not provide detailed instructions on how to prepare and read financial reports;
- Fifth, the reporting system for VAT, CIT and other taxes does not have detailed instructions on how to prepare them;
- Sixth, not analyzing the important points of the report and the provisions of the law;
The teaching staff participating in the practical part are mostly part-time theoretical teachers who have not experienced practical accounting work at enterprises, so they cannot prepare practical documents that meet the requirements of enterprises, so the quality of the practical part is still limited. On the other hand, due to the financial regulations, one hour of practice is only calculated as half of a theoretical period, which is not attractive enough for lecturers to invest in research and practical surveys.
2.3. Actual internship situation before graduation upon graduation
Firstly, for students: Internships and practical work at businesses are a great opportunity for students to learn and apply the knowledge they have learned into practice, and at the same time, this is a good opportunity for students to accumulate experience for their careers. However, information about the financial situation and accounting books of businesses is very sensitive, this information is often kept highly confidential by businesses, so it is difficult for interns to access actual data of businesses. According to Associate Professor, Dr. Dang Van Thanh - Chairman of the Vietnam Association of Accountants and Auditors, interns often do not have access to work, sometimes only visit businesses a few times a week, and mainly do chores such as sweeping the room, making tea, washing dishes, etc. Therefore, students who are allowed to do internships are not given detailed instructions, the data provided is too old and unsystematic or the information is dishonest, making the results of the actual internship at the business not meet the requirements.
Second, regarding the teachers: The team of instructors is not evenly qualified. Some teachers are too highly qualified and specialize in research, so their practical work and graduation internship guidance are sometimes not close to the reality and level of the students. Some teachers instruct graduation internships but have never practiced in practice themselves, so their guidance only stops at general theory. The remaining few teachers who both teach and participate in practical work at businesses require students to do more practical reports, beyond the students' capacity, so they only attract studious students.
Thirdly, the way of evaluating the quality of writing reports and graduation internships is not really objective, still heavily influenced by prejudice and equalization, unrealistic encouragement leading to the situation where the next class looks at the previous class, internships are done carelessly and lack seriousness. Therefore, internships and writing graduation reports gradually become a formality to complete a course in the training program.
2.4. Updating legal documents in the financial sector Accounting - Auditing - Tax
Our Accounting - Auditing system and tax policies are in the process of being built and completed, so there are frequent changes such as: updating and upgrading software to support tax declaration, tax laws, tax reduction policies, tax payment extensions, etc. Therefore, each student upon graduation who wants to do well in their work at the enterprise, in addition to the above knowledge, students need to know and regularly update the current legal document system, what legal documents regulate their work, where to look up and search. This has been required by teachers, but students have not yet researched it systematically and thoroughly.
Based on the objective assessment of the current situation of internship and graduation thesis, the Faculty of Accounting has researched innovation by building a "Virtual Accounting Practice Room".
3. EXCEL SOLUTION - VIRTUAL ACCOUNTING LABORATORY
3.1. Overview of “Excel – Accounting Practice Room”
Excel is a very effective tool in Accounting - Auditing that has been used by many foreign companies while Vietnamese enterprises pay little attention to Excel. Especially for Auditors, proficient use of Excel in the auditing process is one of the skills required when participating in recruitment. Through surveying and analyzing the actual work in the accounting department of enterprises, Excel - Accounting Practice Room was researched, designed and implemented all accounting operations of the enterprise. The advantage of Excel - Accounting Practice Room compared to accounting software is that learners can design an accounting software by themselves using Excel. Thereby, learners have the ability to self-study and improve their professional expertise in a very short period of time. Learners can deeply understand accounting operations, simple data entry, and quickly and accurately summarize data according to the requirements of managers.
An outstanding advantage of applying Excel accounting software to accounting work is that the worker can edit common errors himself, while specialized software requires waiting for the supplier to process, which takes a lot of time. Specialized software suppliers can support faster troubleshooting by using the Internet, but this support method can easily cause the accounting information of the business to be spread out. Therefore, applying Excel accounting software to serve the teaching and training of working skills for students majoring in Accounting and Auditing is a solution that meets both theoretical and practical requirements.
Excel – Virtual Accounting Lab is divided into three parts:
Part 1 – Knowledge about Excel.
Students will study basic and advanced Excel knowledge, based on which they will build Accounting Software using Excel.
Part 2: Practice accounting on Excel.
- Learners are provided with a complete set of documents according to current accounting regulations for their internship;
- Learners practice designing accounting books (general ledger, detailed ledger) on Excel;
- Learners practice designing Financial Reporting systems on Excel;
- Learners are guided to practice creating a financial reporting system on the General Department of Taxation's HTKK software.
Part 3: Product set made on Excel.
- Documents are prepared and stored in accordance with accounting law;
- The set of accounting books is designed and implemented according to the actual operations of the enterprise and the provisions of accounting law;
- Financial statements are prepared according to the topics and regulations of accounting law;
- The VAT, corporate income tax and personal income tax reports have been prepared according to the assignment and tax management law regulations;
- Data on the established Excel accounting software will be used for all accounting operations of the enterprise in accordance with the prescribed regime;
The product set is researched and printed by students on Excel as a basis for evaluating students' learning results. Students can use the results made on Excel to supplement their job applications.
Part 4: Refer to results with specialized accounting software.
Based on the results of the practice on Excel, students use the set of documents that have been set up to practice on Misa accounting software to:
- Referencing results between practice on Excel and accounting software;
- Comparing and evaluating the usefulness between accounting on Excel and specialized accounting software helps learners understand more deeply the nature of accounting.
- Use a combination of Excel and specialized accounting software when implementing accounting work into practice at the enterprise.
Part 5: Accounting Game
Accounting game is the name of a practical part of students in the Virtual Accounting Department. To implement the accounting game, students are divided into groups of 4-5 people, each group is the accounting department of a business. Each student in the group is assigned to a specific job position in the accounting department. Students carry out transactions with other businesses, from the stages of creating documents, collecting and paying money, calculating salaries, accounting for accounting operations, preparing tax reports and creating a financial reporting system. In addition to improving students' professional skills, this part helps students practice teamwork skills and data protection and explanation skills.
At the end of the internship at the “Virtual Accounting Room”, each student must synthesize knowledge on a “mind map”. Students present the knowledge they have acquired to the evaluation board. The internship at the “Virtual Accounting Room” has helped students not only gain a deeper understanding of theoretical knowledge and practical working skills at organizations and businesses, but also practice honesty and ethics in the accounting profession./.
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