Final Exam — Instructions
Overview
This is the scored final exam for Financial Accounting. It is cumulative: the course plan draws it from all nine course objectives, from who uses financial statements in Week 1 to cash flows, the ratios, and the course synthesis in Week 15. It is given in Week 16, the finals week, which has no new module and no new material.
The final has 40 questions, and every question counts the same. Thirty-three ask you to pick the one best option from a short list. Four ask you to mark every option that applies, and three ask you to judge a statement true or false. By difficulty, 11 questions are on the easier side, 19 are of medium difficulty, and 10 are harder.
Every balance, transaction, schedule, or statement line a question uses is written out in words inside the question, so nothing depends on reading a chart or a picture. Many questions ask for a short computation with the figures the question gives you, such as a depreciation amount, a paycheck line, a bond's interest expense, or an adjusted cash balance. Others ask which accounts an entry debits and credits, where an item belongs on a statement, or what a rule or a method does. Every business in a question is illustrative: it was invented for the question and describes no real company.
Every question practices a skill you have already used in the weekly quizzes, lecture tutorials, and Accounting Workshops. Nothing on the final is new.
Coverage and scope
The course plan gives the final its heaviest weight in the second half of the course, Objectives 6 to 9, taught in Weeks 9 to 15, while still drawing on Objectives 1 to 5. The questions were drawn from the course's question bank, and this form leans that way strongly. Thirty-nine of the 40 questions come from the material of Weeks 9 to 15, and one comes from Week 3. Every one of the nine objectives appears at least once.
Thirty questions check Objectives 6 to 9. The other 10 check Objectives 1 to 5: one of them is the Week 3 question, and the other 9 check an early objective inside a later week's material. Here is what this form actually contains, first by week and then by objective.
| Week | Topic | Questions | Objectives checked |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | Recording transactions: debits, credits, and the trial balance | 1 | Objective 1 (1) |
| 9 | Cash and the bank reconciliation | 6 | Objective 6 (5), Objective 2 (1) |
| 10 | Receivables | 4 | Objective 6 (3), Objective 3 (1) |
| 11 | Long-lived assets | 7 | Objective 7 (6), Objective 3 (1) |
| 12 | Current liabilities and payroll | 5 | Objective 7 (4), Objective 3 (1) |
| 13 | Long-term liabilities | 7 | Objective 8 (5), Objective 4 (1), Objective 7 (1) |
| 14 | Stockholders' equity | 3 | Objective 4 (2), Objective 8 (1) |
| 15 | Cash flows, analysis, and the course synthesis | 7 | Objective 9 (5), Objective 4 (1), Objective 5 (1) |
No question is drawn directly from the material of Weeks 1 and 2 or Weeks 4 to 8.
| Objective | What the questions ask you to do | Weeks that teach it | Questions |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Explain what financial accounting is for, who uses it, and the economic entity assumption | 1, used again in 3 | 1 |
| 2 | Analyze transactions and record balanced journal entries with each account's normal balance | 2 and 3, carried into 9 | 1 |
| 3 | Apply accrual accounting and the adjusting entries, which never touch Cash | 4, carried into 10, 11, and 12 | 3 |
| 4 | Complete the accounting cycle: the statements in order, the classified balance sheet, and closing | 5, carried into 13, 14, and 15 | 4 |
| 5 | Account for merchandising and inventory, including gross profit and gross margin | 6 and 7, carried into 15 | 1 |
| 6 | Describe internal control, reconcile cash, and account for receivables | 8, 9, and 10 | 8 |
| 7 | Account for long-lived assets, short-term debts, and payroll | 11 and 12, carried into 13 | 11 |
| 8 | Account for bonds and for the owners' equity, including earnings per share | 13 and 14 | 6 |
| 9 | Prepare a cash flow statement and read the four ratios | 15 | 5 |
Each question checks exactly one objective, so the objective column adds to 40, the same as the week column.
Read the two tables together. Weeks 11, 13, and 15 carry the most questions, 7 each, so long-lived assets, bonds, and cash flows deserve the most review time. Week 9 comes next with 6, then Week 12 with 5, Week 10 with 4, and Week 14 with 3. By objective, long-lived assets, short-term debts, and payroll (Objective 7) is the heaviest, with 11 questions. Internal control, cash, and receivables (Objective 6) follows with 8, and bonds and the owners' equity (Objective 8) with 6.
Here is the ground each week taught. These are the topics the questions come from, not the questions themselves:
- Week 3: debits and credits and normal balances, the journal and the ledger, and the trial balance, with Week 1's economic entity assumption called back.
- Week 9: the control activities applied to cash, taught through six categories from the GAO's Green Book, with segregation of duties and its limit. Then the petty cash fund and the bank statement. Then the bank reconciliation: deposits in transit and outstanding checks on the bank side, and service charges, NSF checks, interest, and the company's own errors on the book side. Last come journal entries for the book-side items only, the transposition error, and cash equivalents.
- Week 10: accounts and notes receivable, and the direct write-off and allowance methods, set side by side by what each does to the books. Then the allowance as a contra asset, the aging schedule and bad debt expense, the write-off and the recovery, net realizable value, and simple interest on a note.
- Week 11: the cost of a long-lived asset, and depreciation as cost allocation, never market value and never cash. Three depreciation methods, set side by side by what each does to expense and book value. The gain or loss on a disposal, and, in words, intangible assets, goodwill, and the depletion of natural resources.
- Week 12: the common current liabilities, including notes payable, sales tax a seller collects, and the current portion of long-term debt. Then gross pay with overtime under the federal overtime rule, and the two payroll taxes withheld at the rates the course pins, with their wage base. Last come net pay, the employer's own payroll taxes, and loss contingencies, in words.
- Week 13: bond terms; bonds issued at face, at a discount, and at a premium; even amortization, interest expense, and carrying value; GAAP's effective-interest approach, in words; installment notes, in words; and bonds on the balance sheet.
- Week 14: the corporate form; authorized, issued, and outstanding shares; par value; issuing stock above par; and preferred stock. Then cash dividends and their three dates, stock dividends and splits in words, treasury stock at cost, the retained earnings statement and the equity section, and earnings per share.
- Week 15: operating, investing, and financing activities; the indirect method; why net income and cash flow differ; and four ratios, each read without a verdict. Then the Form 10‑K on EDGAR, read for its structure only, and the course synthesis, the running case read from its first month to its second year.
The early objectives still count. Nine questions check Objectives 2 to 5 inside a later week's material, the way those weeks called them back. Week 9 records the reconciliation's book-side entries with Week 3's debits and credits. Weeks 10, 11, and 12 each treat one entry as a Week 4 adjustment or accrual: bad debt expense in the period of the sales, depreciation, and the employer's payroll taxes. Weeks 13, 14, and 15 use Week 5's statements: bonds on the balance sheet, the retained earnings statement and the equity section, and the statements read across two years. Week 15 also returns to gross margin from Week 6. One more question links two later weeks: Week 13 compares the even amortization of a bond discount or premium with Week 11's even depreciation.
These notes map the skills the final checks. The questions themselves are drawn from the course's question bank and are not listed here.
Instructions
- Attempts: one. The final is a single scored attempt.
- Time limit: there is no time limit. Take the time you need, as long as you submit before the exam closes.
- Window: the final opens in Week 16 and closes at the due time your instructor sets. Start early enough to finish comfortably inside that window.
- Navigation: the questions appear one at a time, and once you move on you cannot go back to an earlier question. Settle each one before you move to the next.
- Materials: every figure a question uses is written out in the question, and scratch paper is enough for each computation. Write each step on its own line, as you did in the tutorials, and check that every entry you picture has equal debits and credits. The syllabus sets no rule on notes or on a calculator, so your instructor will tell you before the final opens what you may have beside you.
- After you submit: Canvas shows your result. The keyed choices stay hidden so the final stays fair for every student.
Academic integrity
The final is an individual, scored assessment, and it is closed to AI. Do not use a chatbot or any other AI tool, do not get help from another person, and do not share or post the questions during or after your attempt. The syllabus closes the final to AI, requires it to be entirely your own work, and names using AI on the final as one of the violations that matter most in this course. The final confirms that you personally can analyze a transaction, choose the accounts and the debit and credit, compute an adjustment or a depreciation amount, and read a financial statement.
The honest way to prepare is open to you. The study guide, the practice final, and the exam-prep tutorial rehearse the same skills with fresh variants, and nothing on them appears on the final word for word.
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