USA Textbook Accounting vs Real World Accounting

[5till0ftheNight]

I am currently in Intermediate Accounting 1 and we are using the text by Kieso published by Wiley. There are so many problems and exercises in the text and the text also mentioned there were even MORE problems that can be tried on their website. SO, with so many Accounting problems and exercises I was wondering something.

How relevant are all of those problems to the REAL WORLD of accounting? For instance, if I did practically every problem and exercise in that book (and truly understood them all), would it make me a better REAL WORLD accountant compared to my peers?

Basically, I want to know how much of the text problems actually correlates to a real on the job experience? Would I be able to pick up things faster on my job?

If doing more and more problems in the text would be make a better accountant quicker in the real world, I would really like to know from someone who has experience!

Thanks!

 

[kirby]

When I took acctg, one of the profs would create the test from homework problems that he had NOT assigned. So you can be sure we did ALL the problems in the book to prepare. Anyway, yes doing more problems will improve your skill. When you get to "real world' you will not be doing problems, of course, but it is the PROBLEM SOLVING PROCESS that will help you with new transactions or odd transactions, etc.

 

[ManagingPayables]

Hi,

I don't remember what intermidiate accounting was about when I was in school. I guess it's financial accounting (knowing the accounting standards and some intermediate concepts from accounting entry to financial reports)? If so, I'd say you should do as many exercises as it takes for you to be comfortable to do it withouth even thinking about it. If you become a professionnal accountant (CPA) or anything related to professional level accounting you probably won't do ''basic'' data entry but you'll be responsible for the entries of the clerks and technicians. If you're to take as much time as them on each entries, you'll be working 2000 hours a week. I guess what I mean is you probably won't use every notions. Not only because you might not be the one doing the entries, but because there's such a range of jobs for accountants that you might not use it at all. But you'll need to be able to understand where the information on the statements come from, what's the impact of different depreciation methods or valuation methods, etc.

When I was in school (just a few years back) we were really irritated by the fact that every accounting exam was meant to be almost impossible to finish in the time allocated to do it. An then in our CPA program (I'm in Canada) it was also always about doing some reports and analysis in 1/10 of the time you would have taken. Now I'm grateful for that, because I became productive and confident, so I get to have my week ends off instead of doing unofficial over time