Week 1 Accounting Workshop: Reading a Plant Nursery's Opening Plan

Part 1 — The Big Picture

Lenders, suppliers, customers, investors, and tax authorities all decide things from a business's numbers, and Week 1 asks the question every later week builds on: who reads these numbers, and under whose rules? This week you learned what accounting is, the difference between financial and managerial accounting, the three forms of business organization, the economic entity assumption, who sets GAAP, and the AICPA's six principles. In this workshop you read one illustrative business's opening plan, a plant nursery set up as a corporation by three founders, before a single transaction is recorded: you tally its planned events by the party on the other side, keep one founder's personal spending out of the nursery's records, sort its readers into internal and external users, match each rule setter to its role, catch a chatbot making the slips this course warns about, and reflect on where your own first instinct was off.

Time budget: Plan for about 90 minutes.

Part 2 — The Task

Guiding question: Before the illustrative plant nursery records a single transaction, who will read its numbers, what will each reader want to know, and which rules and which records belong to the nursery rather than to its founders?

Workshop data: An illustrative opening plan for a neighborhood plant nursery organized as a corporation by three founders: ten planned first-month events, four lines from one founder's card statement, six possible readers, and four rule-setter descriptions

Source: An opening plan written for this workshop and printed in full in Part 4; it describes no real business, and it names every person by role only.

• Rows: 10 planned first-month events, one row each in the events table
• Card statement lines: 4 lines from one founder's card statement, one row each in the entity table
• Readers: 6 possible readers of the nursery's numbers, one row each in the readers table
• Rule-setter descriptions: 4 descriptions to match to the FASB, the SEC, the IASB, or the AICPA

Part 3 — Materials & Procedure

Tools and materials

• A free spreadsheet (Google Sheets, or any free spreadsheet) for journals, T-accounts, trial balances, schedules, and statements, with every total computed by formula; the SEC's free EDGAR search for public companies' annual reports; and one approved chatbot used as a sparring partner whose entries, totals, and claims about standards and tax rates the student checks by hand and against the pinned source before trusting them
• A free spreadsheet (Google Sheets, or any free spreadsheet)
• A notebook or any free note-taking app
• One approved chatbot

Ways of working

• record-and-post
• adjust-and-report
• analyze-and-explain

Procedure

1. Read the whole opening plan in Part 4 once without writing anything. Notice that the nursery is a corporation owned by three founders, and that every person is named by role only. Check: You can say in one sentence what kind of business this is and who owns it.
2. In the events table, write the party on the other side of each planned event: shareholders, customers, vendors, or employees. Then count the events for each party in the tally table, using the spreadsheet's COUNTIF function or a hand tally, and add the four counts with a SUM formula. Tool: A free spreadsheet (Google Sheets, or any free spreadsheet). Check: Your four counts add up to the 10 planned events.
3. In the entity table, mark each card statement line as business or personal and give the reason in words. Add the business lines with a SUM formula, and add the personal lines separately. Tool: A free spreadsheet (Google Sheets, or any free spreadsheet). Check: Every line has a label and a reason, and only the business lines go into the nursery's total.
4. In the readers table, mark each reader internal or external, name the branch of accounting that serves it, and write the one question it would ask of the nursery's statements. Tool: A notebook or any free note-taking app. Check: Each reader has a group, a branch, and a question in its own words.
5. In the rules table, match each description to the FASB, the SEC, the IASB, or the AICPA, and add one sentence on how the SEC's authority relates to a small private corporation like the nursery. Tool: A notebook or any free note-taking app. Check: Each description has one body, and no body is used twice.
6. Paste the Part 6 prompt into one approved chatbot after your tables are complete, then record each claim it makes in the critique log, mark it as accurate or as one of the listed failure shapes, and write the correction with your evidence. Tool: One approved chatbot. Check: Every chatbot claim in the log carries a mark and, where needed, a correction with evidence.
7. Answer the five analysis questions in Part 5, ending each with one plain sentence that says what your table shows. Check: Each answer points to a table and ends in one plain sentence.

Fallback route

When to use it: Use this route if no spreadsheet is available or the chatbot will not load.

Tally the events and add the card lines by hand, showing each sum, and complete the critique on the equivalent route instead of the chatbot. Then complete every scaffold table and analysis question and submit the same items for equal credit.

This route earns the same credit as the primary route.

Part 4 — The Scaffold

The plan comes first: read each planned event, then name the party on the other side.

Student scaffold table 1

Event	Planned first-month event (illustrative)	Party on the other side
E1	The three founders invest $18,000 cash in exchange for 18,000 shares of $1-par common stock.
E2	Pays $4,500 cash for greenhouse shelving.
E3	Buys $1,200 of seedlings and soil on account from a regional grower.
E4	Pays $900 for a 6-month insurance policy.
E5	A landscaping company orders $2,000 of shrubs on account.
E6	Walk-in shoppers pay $2,600 cash for plants.
E7	A school garden club pays $400 in advance for a spring planting workshop the nursery has not yet held.
E8	Pays $1,100 rent for the month.
E9	Pays $1,300 wages to two part-time helpers.
E10	Pays a $300 cash dividend to the shareholders.

Tally the events by party so you can read the plan as a small dataset.

Student scaffold table 2

Party	Events	Which events
Shareholders
Customers
Vendors
Employees
Total

Test the economic entity assumption on one founder's card statement.

Student scaffold table 3

Line	Card statement line	Business or personal	Reason
C1	$85 of potting mix for the nursery's display tables
C2	$60 for the founder's own phone bill
C3	$140 of fuel for the nursery's delivery van
C4	$45 for the founder's family dinner
Business total
Personal total

Sort the nursery's possible readers and say what each one wants to know.

Student scaffold table 4

Reader	Who it is	Internal or external	Branch of accounting	The question it asks
R1	The three founders, deciding which plants to stock
R2	A bank the nursery may ask for a loan
R3	The regional grower that sold seedlings on account
R4	The school garden club that paid in advance
R5	The IRS
R6	An outside investor thinking about buying shares later

Match each description to the body it describes.

Student scaffold table 5

Description	What it says	Body (FASB, SEC, IASB, or AICPA)
S1	Writes GAAP as an independent, private-sector, not-for-profit board
S2	The federal agency with legal authority over public-company reporting
S3	Sets International Financial Reporting Standards
S4	Publishes a Code of Professional Conduct with six principles

Log each claim the chatbot or the printed flawed analysis makes, mark it, and correct it with evidence.

Student scaffold table 6

Claim quoted	Accurate, or which failure shape	Correction and evidence

Part 5 — Analysis Questions

1. Using your tally table and your entity table, how many planned events involve each party, and what is the nursery's business total from the card statement? Show that the four counts add up to 10 and show the sum for the business lines, then say each result in one sentence of words.
2. Using your readers table, which readers are internal users and which are external users? Explain how the three founders can be internal users when they choose what to stock and external users when they read the statements as shareholders.
3. Using your entity table, explain why the founder's phone bill and family dinner stay out of the nursery's records even though the same card paid for them, and name the rule that decides it.
4. Using your rules table, describe what the FASB and the SEC each do, and say how the SEC's authority over public-company reporting relates to a small private corporation like the nursery. Then name the AICPA principle most directly tested if a founder asked you to leave event E6 out of the records, and end with one plain sentence.
5. Choose one and answer it in 3–4 sentences. (a) Name two things this opening plan cannot tell you about the nursery yet, and explain why Week 1 records no transaction. (b) Describe where your own first instinct about one reader or one card line was wrong, and what made you change it.

Part 6 — AI-Critique Moment

Choose one equal-credit critique route. Route A: ask an approved AI tool to critique your completed work, then check its response against your own evidence. Route B is the no-AI equivalent printed below.

Approved tools: Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, Microsoft Copilot.

Prompt to paste:

I've pasted my completed Week 1 Accounting Workshop tables above. They read an illustrative opening plan for a plant nursery organized as a corporation by three founders, before any transaction is recorded. Please do eleven things. First, write the journal entry for event E1. Second, check that your E1 entry balances. Third, say how much revenue the nursery has earned from the school garden club's $400 in event E7. Fourth, say how much of the $900 insurance policy in event E4 is an expense this month. Fifth, add up the nursery's business total from the founder's card statement. Sixth, name the accounting standard that lets a sole owner or founder count personal spending as a business expense. Seventh, give the payroll tax rate the nursery withholds from the helpers' wages in event E9. Eighth, say whether the nursery could use LIFO for its plant inventory under IFRS. Ninth, say whether the nursery's income statement shows how much cash it has. Tenth, say whether the greenhouse shelving's value on the books will track what it could be sold for. Eleventh, sort the bank, the regional grower, and the school garden club into internal or external users.

Test the response for these likely failures:

• Chatbots often write E1 with Common Stock on the left and Cash on the right, reversing the debit and the credit.
• Chatbots sometimes write an E1 entry with one amount on one side and a different amount on the other, or a second credit with no matching debit.
• Chatbots often call the garden club's $400 earned revenue the moment the cash arrives.
• Chatbots often treat the whole $900 insurance payment as this month's expense.
• Chatbots sometimes add every card line into the nursery's total, or add the business lines wrong, or report a party tally that does not add up to the 10 planned events.
• Chatbots sometimes cite a made-up standard or rule number that lets an owner count personal spending as a business expense.
• Chatbots often quote a Social Security or Medicare rate or a wage base from an earlier year, or an invented one, for the helpers' wages.
• Chatbots sometimes say the nursery could choose LIFO under IFRS the same way it could under U.S. GAAP.
• Chatbots often say the income statement shows how much cash the nursery has.
• Chatbots sometimes say the shelving's value on the books will rise and fall with what it could be sold for.
• Chatbots sometimes sort the regional grower or the garden club as internal users because they deal with the nursery so closely.

In 3–4 sentences, name what the chatbot got right, quote at least two of its claims that fit a listed failure shape, and correct each with evidence from your tables or the chapter.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

No AI account is required for this workshop. Instead of the chatbot, critique this flawed analysis, printed here in full: "The founders' investment in E1 is recorded with Common Stock debited and Cash credited. The E1 entry shows $18,000 of debits and $1,800 of credits, which is close enough. The garden club's $400 is revenue this month because the cash came in. The whole $900 insurance payment is this month's expense. The nursery's card total is $330, because every card line counts. FASB Rule 12 lets a founder count personal spending as a business expense. The helpers' wages carry a 7 percent Social Security tax on every dollar. Under IFRS the nursery may choose LIFO for its plants. The income statement shows how much cash the nursery has. The shelving's book value will follow what it could be sold for. The regional grower and the garden club are internal users because they work closely with the nursery." Mark it up: quote each flawed sentence, name what is wrong (a debit and a credit reversed, an entry that does not balance, revenue recognized when cash is received, an expense in the wrong period, an arithmetic error in a total, an invented standard or rule, an outdated or invented tax rate, LIFO presented as allowed under IFRS, net income treated as cash, depreciation treated as market value, or an item in the wrong classification), cite the evidence from your tables or this week's chapter, and write a corrected sentence beneath it; for the sentences about entries, rates, and inventory, the correction can be a flag naming the later week that teaches them. This route assesses the same objective (Objective 1 — explain the purpose of financial accounting, its users, the forms of business organization, the roles of GAAP, the FASB, the SEC, and IFRS, and the ethical principles that guide accountants) as the chatbot critique, takes comparable effort (about 30 minutes and 200–300 words), is scored by the same scoring criteria for the same credit, and its own submission artifact is the marked-up flawed analysis, posted in place of the chatbot report and share link.

Part 7 — What to Submit

• All six completed scaffold tables: the events table, the tally, the entity table, the readers table, the rules table, and the critique log
• Written answers to all five analysis questions
• The chatbot critique report with its share link, or the equivalent route's marked-up flawed analysis
• A short reflection, option (a) or (b), on where your own first instinct about one reader or one card line was wrong

Deliverable:

A short Accounting Workshop report on one illustrative plant nursery's opening plan: six completed tables (the events table, the tally, the entity table, the readers table, the rules table, and the critique log), written answers to five analysis questions, a short reflection, and a critique of a chatbot's reading of the same plan, or, on the equivalent route, a marked-up correction of the printed flawed analysis. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text. Choose a written, recorded, or visual form for your answers; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria.

Rubric

The rubric below shows how each submitted part is evaluated; bands are full, partial, or none.

Workshop evaluation criteria

Criterion	Full	Partial	None
Party tally and entity test, with every sum shown	Every event carries one fitting party, the four counts add up to 10, only the business card lines are added into the nursery's total, and each sum is shown and said in words.	The tally and the entity test are attempted, but a party or a label does not fit, a sum is off, or a result is not said in words.	No tally and no entity test appear.
Sorting the readers and naming their questions	All six readers are marked internal or external correctly, each with the branch of accounting that serves it and a fitting question, and the founders' two roles are explained.	The readers are sorted, but one or two groups or branches do not fit, a question is missing, or the founders' two roles are not explained.	The readers table is missing.
Who sets the rules, and the ethics that apply	All four descriptions are matched to the right body, the FASB and the SEC are described accurately with the SEC's reach to a small private corporation explained, and a fitting AICPA principle is named for leaving E6 out.	The bodies are matched, but one match is wrong, the SEC's reach is not explained, or no principle is named.	No rules table and no account of the rule setters appear.
Plain-sentence readings and the limits of the plan	Every analysis answer points to a table and ends in one plain sentence, and the chosen reflection option names concrete limits or a concrete change of mind.	Some answers end without a plain sentence, or the reflection stays general.	No plain-sentence readings and no reflection appear.
Critique of the chatbot or of the printed flawed analysis	On either route, at least four claims are quoted, each is marked accurate or named as a failure shape, and every error is corrected with evidence from the tables or the chapter; both routes earn this band equally.	On either route, claims are quoted and marked, but fewer than four are checked, or a correction lacks evidence; both routes earn this band equally.	No critique appears, or pasted output is submitted without any checking.
Reflection on a first instinct	The reflection names a specific first instinct about a reader, a card line, or a rule setter, says what changed it, and ties the change to a course idea.	The reflection names an instinct but not what changed it, or does not tie it to a course idea.	No reflection appears.

Quality Gate

• Every planned event has one party, and the four party counts add up to 10.
• Only business lines go into the nursery's card total, and every line carries a reason.
• Every reader is marked internal or external with a branch of accounting and a question.
• The FASB is described as a private-sector standard setter, never as a government agency, and the SEC as created by the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.
• No standard, rule, rate, statistic, date, or quotation is invented anywhere in the submission, and no transaction is recorded.
• The critique quotes the chatbot or the flawed analysis and corrects at least two errors with evidence from the tables or the chapter.