The Order of Teaching Accounting Topics-Why Do Most Textbooks End with the Beginning?

Marc Wouters

European Accounting Review, 2008, vol. 17, issue 1, pages 3-14

Abstract: This paper discuss the structure of teaching broad introductory courses in accounting and finance. I propose making cash flows the central theme in such a course: take investment appraisal as the starting point, which demonstrates the need for financing, which creates the need to report regarding separate periods (thereby creating the need for non-cash flow elements such as revenues, capitalization, depreciation, and provisions) and subsequently zooming-in on the sources of profit and loss. The sequence of topics in accounting textbooks is investigated, as a proxy for how introductory courses are taught. Results show that the proposed order would be very unusual, because investment appraisal is typically one of the final chapters.

Keywords: Cash flows; introductory accounting; survey of textbooks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008

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