About the Instructor
Will Swanson
Will Swanson is a certified public accountant (CPA) who currently works as the Director of Accounting at Bismarck Public School District. Prior to being employed with the school, Will worked at a public accounting firm, Brady Martz, as an audit manager. In that job he specialized in overseeing audits of governmental entities, including several school districts in the state.
Important Course Dates
March 4, 2024: Class begins online
May 31, 2024: Course must be completed by this date.
Syllabus
Audit Preparation and Internal Controls Syllabus
Online Lectures
Each lecture has voice recordings that go with the PowerPoint presentation. Please turn your volume on to hear the voice recordings. The recordings should automatically play on each slide when you click to advance. Do not advance the slide until the recording is done. Each lecture will take approximately 30 minutes to listen to.
The questions for each lesson are located towards the end of the slide show. Please e-mail your responses to the questions to will_swanson@bismarckschools.org by May 31, 2024. Answers to lecture questions can e-mailed individually as you complete each lesson, or all together with any other required assignments – whichever you prefer.
Question 1: 10 points
Question 2: 20 points
Lesson 2 – Evaluating Audit Results
Question 1: 10 points
Question 2: 15 points
Question 3: 10 points
Question 1: 25 points
Question 2: 10 points
TOTAL POINT FROM LECTURE ASSIGNMENTS: 100 points
Assigned Reading
Financial Accounting for School Administrators, Tools for Schools. Ronald E. Everett, Donald R. Johnson and Bernard W. Madden. Chapter 24. Pages 249-259
Assignments
Please note that there are two separate final writing assignments below. Be sure to complete BOTH assignments.
- Provide a one page paper regarding the two following items from the required reading. Submit assignment to will_swanson@bismarckschools.org by May 31. (50 points)
- For the Financial Accounting for School Administrators reading, please discuss some of the benefits noted of having an outside auditor review your financial records. Also, discuss some of the important items noted regarding preparing and evaluating requests for proposals for audit firms.
- For the article on the Long Island fraud case, summarize some of the issues that occurred in the fraud discovered. Then, provide me with your opinion on some of the internal controls that the school should have had in place that would have caught the fraud.
- Hopefully this course has helped you learn more about what internal controls are and has given you ideas on new internal controls you could implement. To show you have an understanding of the internal controls in place at your school district, I would like you to write a summary on some of the internal controls you have over the following areas: cash disbursements, cash receipts, payroll. Also, please provide an idea for an internal control you would like to implement in the future for your school district. Submit assignment to will_swanson@bismarckschools.org by May 31. (50 points)
Questions
Questions about the course? Email: will_swanson@bismarckschools.org