Organizing information into useful management reports: Short cases to illustrate reporting principles and coding

The accounting information systems course snatches students from their comfort zone of debits and credits and drops them into the position of czar of information needed by managers to make decisions and manage their day-to-day operations. Instructors of this course have the daunting task of teaching students how to report information in a way that it is meaningful to managers. These reports must adhere to principles not necessarily pertinent to the financial statements with which students are already familiar. These principles of management reports include concise and timely reports, inclusion of physical as well as monetary data, and exception reporting. The authors have developed and used three different teaching cases that resemble real-world experience to help students understand and apply these reporting principles. These cases can be used individually, and instructors might choose to use more than one of them in their AIS course. In addition, these cases challenge students to develop data coding methods that must be used to enable the generation of reports adhering to these principles. Learning objectives, implementation guidance, and teaching notes are provided. Feedback from students on the use of these cases has been overwhelmingly positive. The cases were administered at two universities (the authors’ university and another university) during the fall 2013 semester. The questionnaires administered to the instructor and the students are provided. Results included in this paper suggest that both the students and the instructors found the cases interesting and useful.