February 8, 2021 
This new case has students use a prebuilt interactive Excel dashboard to analyze a company’s product contribution margins and segment margins. This dashboard is ready for students to use; students will view a tutorial video about the case, read the instructions, and use the Excel dashboard to answer the case questions. The case will take, on average, 15 – 20 minutes to complete.
Overview
This interactive Excel dashboard project shows students how to drill-down into a company’s profitability data, gaining a deeper understanding of the company’s contribution margin and how this information can be used for managerial accounting and decision-making. Students will use an Excel interactive dashboard to analyze product contribution margins. A tutorial video and student case handout will guide students through the information needed to complete the case. Several resources have been developed for this case to make it easy to integrate into courses; more information follows about how to access the Teaching Notes for this project.
Background
This Jubilee Superstores data set is based on retail sales transactions and the company’s related cost data. The data set contains more than 1,000 sales transaction records for two years. Each sales record contains information on product, region, division, and more. All data and names are fictitious. For this prebuilt Excel interactive dashboard project for managerial accounting, students will not be working directly with the data, but will be interacting with a dashboard that has been built using the data.
Case learning objectives
After completing this case, students will be able to:
- Describe a dashboard
- Define a slicer
- Analyze profitability using the dashboard
Case resources
The following resources are available for this case:
- Student case handout
- Interactive Excel dashboard files for Windows
- Interactive Excel dashboard files for Mac
- Step-by-step tutorial videos (captioned)
- Scripted tutorial video slides (pdf)
- Multiple-choice questions with answers for each of the two data sets
- Video assignment instructions
Student case handout
The student case handout provides background on the case and data set. It also contains the requirements for the case and frequently asked questions. The student case handout also provides the instructions for the case, including the links for the tutorial video and the scripted tutorial slides in pdf format. The learning objectives are listed in the student case handout. It also contains the data dictionaries for the data set. You can download the student case at this link.
Requests for the Teaching Notes
***You can request the Teaching Notes for this Prebuilt Interactive Excel Dashboard project for introductory managerial accounting by filling out the form at this link.***
Give me about 5 – 8 days to respond – but check your Spam folder for the email if you do not see my email within that approximate time frame. (You may want to add drwendytietz@gmail.com to your Safe Senders list. Please don’t send an email to that address – that is an email address used solely for distributing instructor resources. Thank you!) You will need to fill out a brief form and then we will verify your instructor status prior to sending you the Teaching Notes. We generally send the Teaching Notes within a week after the request; we will contact you if we need additional information to verify your instructor status.
A related interactive dashboard case is being posted in the next few weeks
Sometime in the next few weeks, I will be posting a related, longer interactive Excel dashboard project for managerial accounting – the upcoming dashboard project has the student construct the dashboard in Excel. Students can complete this initial project that has them use a prebuilt interactive Excel dashboard to learn how to use a dashboard, and then can work on a project where they learn how to build the dashboard.
I hope you and your students find value in this interactive Excel dashboard data analytics case for introductory managerial accounting. Please share any feedback with me about your experiences in using the case. Enjoy and happy learning!
Wendy Tietz, wtietz@kent.edu
Accounting in the Headlines 
Wendy, I can’t find the link to the materials.
If you scroll down the post to the section called Requests for the Teaching Notes, you will see a bold-font sentence – there is a link to the form at the end of that sentence. You fill out the form to request the teaching notes:)
Thank you for these materials. Students get a great introduction to how data can be used in a real world scenario.
Hello – I have requested the teaching notes. Is this where i also access the Excel files? i didn’t see these linked in the student handout.
Everything you need is included with the teaching notes. Those are sent out about once a week.