This online learning tool is designed to introduce a novel and refreshing way in teaching accounting and finance concepts to students and to create a more interactive learning experience in the classroom. The online tool itself is available at: http://apps.cte.smu.edu.sg/external-financing/, which the students can access regardless of whether they are at the university or at home.
It is used to explain the relevant concepts related to financial forecasting and financial planning. Specifically, there are two learning objectives of the online tool - for the students to be able (i) to prepare pro-forma financial statements as firms anticipate certain growth in sales, and (ii) to use the pro-forma financial statements to compute the external financing needs (EFN).
A teaching note is also provided to students to illustrate the key concepts step-by-step. In particular, key assumptions on the relationship between items in income statements & balance sheets with sales are also explained in class and highlighted in the note. Moreover, due to the dynamic nature of the online object, students can click on “Request for new worksheet” to vary the growth rate of sales (instead of just using the default rate of 25%) so that they can practice more with the tool independently at home.
