SCHOOL OF HOSPITALITY, TOURISM AND CULINARY ARTS
BACHELOR OF INTERNATIONAL HOSPITALITY
MANAGEMENT (HONS)
HTM 2453 MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING
BH6
REFLECTIVE LEARNING ASSIGNMENT
NAME
Silvia Chandra
STUDENT ID NUMBER
0311317
GROUPING
3
As we can guess from the name, Management Accounting subject is the continuation from
Principles of Accounting or Financial Accounting. Both of them have the same basic of
recording expenses and profits in the form of balance sheet and income statement. But, there
are some aspects that differentiate those two types of accounting report. Financial accounting is
bond under stricter rules which named GAAP. It is the report that is made for external users
such as government, investors, competitors, etc for the purpose of recording past events. On
the other side, management accounting is a subject that equips us with planning and evaluating
skills. Mostly it deals with budgeting expenses and income, so that it has flexibility in its form of
report. Therefore the report is made for the internal users.
In my own personal opinion, budgeting is more interesting than recording the past cash flow.
Specifically, I love the field of flexible budget and standard costing. In this chapter, we learn
about analyzing the past records and comparing it to the standard budget we have prepared
before. In fact, most of the times, when we have planned something, things can go in the
different direction. Sometimes there is not much difference and the other times it ended up with
a big gap. However, both of them can be either favorable or not. When the analysis mostly
results in unfavorable term, it means big problems occur. So for the first step, we need to
prepare additional account between the static budget and actual result named flexible budget.
Basically, the purpose of this budget is to make the comparing process between the static
budget and the flexible budget easier. Then, we can know in which part we overestimate or
underestimate and we can plan better for the future.
The unique part here is the topic that I love the most turns out to be the topic that I struggle the
most. It is more complicated than the previous topics but I feel that it is also the most important
among all the other topics. Maybe it is because I put more effort in understanding the topic and
that’s what makes the topic become my favorite. I believe that in default mode, all human beings
are born to be excellent people. What differentiates all of us is only the amount of effort that we
give to exercise our skills to reach the best. This subject has helped me to train 3 graduate
capabilities of Taylor’s students which are discipline specific knowledge, interpersonal skills and
problem solving skills. Management accounting is a subject that combines both theories and
practices. In order to be faster at doing the tutorial, we need to understand the basic which is
the theory. Since this subject will be very useful to understand lots of journals in the future, I
need to commit myself to understand the fundamental theories. Therefore, in the future I will
save lots of time of re-reading and re-learning.
Just like the other subjects, we were also given group projects to solve a case study regarding
master budget and decision making. Honestly, if we never skip the class and always can
understand what the teacher explains, we will find no difficulty in completing the assignments.
Unfortunately, we do pay attention but most of the times we were too busy copying the answer
from the board. As the result, we have no clues about where to start. Then, we started from the
scratch, we opened our notes and tutorial answers to recall back what we have learnt. By doing
those works, we managed to complete our assignment. As the result, we trained our problem
solving skills. To work best in a group, interpersonal skill is highly needed. Sometimes, there are
some people in the group who work faster or slower and better or worse. As a group, we all
need to be considerate about each other weakness and strength. Moreover, we need to
motivate each other to achieve the best result. In that way, we effectively cooperate with each
other and produce a good result as well.
Compared to the other subject, this subject is quite interesting since it involves lots of number
and equation. Furthermore, accounting is quite a practical subject. It will be useful for me either
now or in the near future. In this world, almost every transaction we do is related to the money.
We need to understand how the money works in our business and how to effectively use it so
that it can serve our future goal. Since I believe that I will run my own business in the near
future, I need to understand the fundamental theories and equations. That way, no one can trick
me about my own financial status and I know exactly where I stand. Not only useful for my own
business, this knowledge and skill will also useful for me in the hospitality industry. This course
will prepared me to work in the management level and what will people say if someone with top
position can’t even read the hotel accounts?
I realize from the first time that this subject will bring many benefits to me. Sadly, I can’t fully
focus on the lesson from the first class until the end. However, there are lots of invaluable new
things I grasp and I grateful for everything I have achieved through this class. I am able to read
and create budgeted balance sheet and income statement. I am able to make financial decision
judging from the financial position analyzed from the questions. Therefore, I would like to award
myself 8 for my participation in this class. For my future career in the hospitality industry, for the
reasons I have given above, I will give 8 out of 10. This subject will be more essential for me if I
decided not to stay in the hospitality industry and open my own business instead. This way, I
can know whether my business is making profit or not and in which direction should I bring my
business later.