February 25, 2019 
The demand for business graduates with data analytics skills has exploded, while the tools and techniques are continuing to evolve and change at a rapid pace. Three of us who teach introductory accounting (Wendy Tietz, Jennifer Cainas, and Tracie Miller-Nobles) have joined forces to develop a case to introduce data analytics in the introductory financial accounting course. This case uses real-life insurance company data that has been anonymized and simplified. The name of the fictitious company analyzed in the case is “KAT Insurance Company.” The case itself is a one-page case and is designed to be able to be completed in 30 – 40 minutes with each software tool (Excel, Power BI, and Tableau.)
This case teaches students how to drill-down into a company’s sales data, gaining a deeper understanding of the company’s sales and how this information can be used for decision-making. Students will use Excel, Power BI, and/or Tableau to analyze the sales transactions for an insurance company. Students will first have to find and correct errors in the data set. Students then will use various techniques to analyze the case. Step-by-step tutorial videos will guide students through the Excel, Power BI, and Tableau portions of the case analysis. This case will introduce the student to data analytics topics including data cleansing, data dictionaries, and data visualizations.
***You can obtain the Instructor Guide for the KAT Insurance Financial Accounting case by requesting it at this link.***
Give us about 5 – 8 days to respond – but check your Spam folder for the email if you do not see our email within that approximate time frame.
Give us about 5 – 8 days to respond – but check your Spam folder for the email if you do not see our email within that approximate time frame. (You may want to add drwendytietz@gmail.com to your Safe Senders list. Please don’t email to that email address – that is an email address used solely for distributing the KAT Insurance resources. Thank you!)
Several resources have been developed for this case to make it easy to integrate into introductory financial accounting courses. Read on for the resources that have been developed and for information on how to request the case and related resources.
What’s included
The following resources are available for this case and are included or linked in the Instructor Guide for the KAT Insurance Financial Accounting case:
- Case (one-page Word handout)
- Student guide (Word)
- General learning objectives for the overall case
- Specific learning objectives (related to specifically to Excel, Power BI, and Tableau)
- Data sets containing 65,000+ records (4 versions: A, B, C, and D)
- 24-record tutorial data set
- Step-by-step tutorial video (close captioned)
- Scripted tutorial video slides (pdf)
- Editable grading rubric (Word document in Appendix A)
- Multiple-choice questions with solutions for each of the four data sets Excel solution files
- Optional video assignment instructions
How to obtain case materials
***You can obtain the Instructor Guide for the KAT Insurance Financial Accounting case by requesting it at this link.***
You will need to fill out a brief form and then we will verify your instructor status prior to sending you the Instructor Guide. We generally send the Instructor Guide within a week after the request; we will contact you if we need additional information to verify your instructor status.
The Instructor Guide contains links to all the resources listed above. We do ask that you not share the Instructor Guide with students. Please do not post the solutions to the case on Blackboard, Canvas, or any other Learning Management System. Also, please do not post the Instructor Guide or the solutions on any web site. (Thank you in advance for helping to maintain the academic useful life of the materials.)
We hope you find value in this data analytics case for introductory financial accounting. Please share any feedback with us about your experiences in using the case. Enjoy! Also, watch for our upcoming KAT Insurance Managerial Accounting case….
Again, you can obtain the Instructor Guide for the KAT Insurance Financial Accounting case by requesting it at this link.
Sincerely,
Wendy M. Tietz, PhD, CPA, CMA, CSCA
- Kent State University College of Business Administration
- Email: wtietz@kent.edu
- Blog: https://accountingintheheadlines.com/
Jennifer M. Cainas, DBA, MAcc, CPA
- University of South Florida Muma College of Business
- Email: jmcainas@usf.edu
- Blog: https://accountingiscool.com/
Tracie L. Miller-Nobles, CPA
- Austin Community College
- Email: tnobles@austincc.edu
- Blog: https://iteachaccounting.com/
Accounting in the Headlines 
The link took me to DropBox, but I don’t have a DropBox account.
I would appreciate the solution to the data analytics project.
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Hello. Sorry about the errant link. I have updated the link – so if you try again, you should be to a Google Form. Thank you for the heads up.