Case Writing Guide

Purpose:
The purpose of case writing is to emulate real life and build the skills and competencies you will
need throughout your career. This guide will take you through how to approach a case
including outlining, using technical resources and developing those essential case writing skills
such as applying technical and case facts, making recommendations and considering your
users and their needs.

Case Approach

1
Read the case (once or twice, if first time was a skim).

2
Scan and read the exhibits.
Planning
3
Take a step back and pause. Any big picture items?

4
Plan what you are doing to do. Make an OUTLINE

5
Rank and order the issues.

6
Draft a Response

Planning
Planning should take up approximately 10-15% of the total time you spend on the case.
Planning activities include reading the case and exhibits and structuring your outline.

Read the Case

Your starting point is reading the case. You may need to read it more than once to ensure you
are identifying all the relevant facts. An easy way to do this is to use a highlighter while reading
or underlining. When reading you want to make sure you are identifying the following:

 Your role: Are you the controller/ auditor/ advisor

 Who are the users and what are their objectives?
 What is the timeline: Is there a transaction happening right now or planning for five years
down the road
 What are the relevant facts?
 What are the issues?
o What have you need asked to do?
o What is the user confused about?
o Is the user missing something that you think they need?
o An issue the user doesn’t refer to but you know is important
Read the Exhibits
Exhibits are an important part of the case which need to be examined closely. There may be
issues within the exhibits that are not obvious and it is up to you to figure it out. Consideration
should be given to the following:

 What are the facts

 Why do we care
 What parts are applicable
 Do any facts span multiple issues
 Closely read the financials for names, dates, years, details that have been provided,
large value items, big changes, no changes, unusual names or balances, odd ratios or
anything out of place
 Watch the details

Take a Pause
Taking a pause in writing at this stage gives the opportunity to look for any big picture or
pervasive issues that may have been missed while scanning the details. Big picture or
pervasive issues are ones that will could affect multiple issues at the same time. An example of
a pervasive issue is if the organization has a going concern issue.

Outline
An outline is your roadmap of who you are and where you are going within the case. An outline
helps to structure your response and ensure you touch on all the key points you want to address
and ensures you have a logical flow to your work with a clear sense of direction. Within your
outline the critical components to include are:
Role: Who are you in the case? This is the cornerstone of your writing as your response is
going to be different if you are a controller versus an auditor. What are your requirements within
that role? Are you auditing your client? Are you providing advice on an advisory issue?
Users and their objectives: Who is going to be reading your analysis and what is important to
them? DO they have any biases?
Issues and Alternatives: What is the actual issue at hand? What are the possible
alternatives? What criteria should we be using? Are there any sub-issues (minor issues within
the case)? What are the key facts I should be keeping in mind as I write the case.
Ranking: If there are multiple issues you need to rank the issues in order of importance.
Remember your user does not want to wait until the end of a 10-page report to read about the
issue that is most pressing to them.
REMEMBER your outline is not a draft response. It should only contain key words and phrases
to support your writing process without having to re-read the case repeatedly.

How do I Identify the Issues?

When you are identifying the issues there are a couple ways they can be expressed to you
within the case:

 Specific requests: These will be very direct and ask you within your role to complete a
task or be a question
  Items that the user is confused about
 Incorrect statements: The user makes statements that are incorrect, this is a red flag that
you need to address this as an issue
 Items the user told are or could be incorrect
 Items that appear to be important to the user
Case facts are similar to a puzzle. You are trying to fit them together to give you a better
picture; however, not all the pieces may fit and you may be missing a piece.

Ranking of Issues
When you are assessing the ranking of issues there are a number of factors which should be
considered:

 Risk of the transaction: Is the transaction high risk with potential large impacts to the
company? This would increase the ranking of the issue.
 Impact of cash flow: Does the transaction affect cash flows? The larger the impact,
likely the higher the ranking should be.
 Immediacy of need: Consider whether your user needs the information immediately or
whether it is something that could wait. The sooner the information is needed, the
higher the ranking.
 Impact on the life of the entity
 Materiality: The greater the dollar value, the higher the ranking
 Specific requests: If your user is specifically asking for information on an issue, the
ranking would be elevated.
 Order of need: If there is a series of issues where one issue relies on another, you
would want to ensure you are ranking the issues in order of need.

Drafting a Response
When you start your response, you should be introducing your case and purpose. You should
be addressing each issue and including a Heading or subheading for each issue.

Financial Reporting/Tax Issues:

You want to ensure you are addressing the following 4 areas:
Issue: Clearly state the issue in a sentence or two. You want to stress to the user why you are
concerned or raising a particular topic.
GAAP/Analysis: This is where you are going to be discussing the technical information
pertaining the issue which could involve using the Handbook and applying case facts. It is not
enough to have a generic response, you need to apply case facts to the particular issue within
the case to demonstrate your knowledge and application of the knowledge. This is also where
you are going to analyze potential alternatives or address any ambiguities.
Recommendation: Conclude and advise the user of your recommendation and why this is the
best fit for the company. Remember to support your recommendation. Your analysis should
always build to your conclusion or recommendation. The recommendation should be very clear
and consistent with your analysis.
This response template is referred to as IGAR (Issue, GAAP, Analysis, Recommendation) and it
can be very useful for addressing financial reporting issues. As an example consider that you
work for a company that has purchased a piece of equipment that will be used in a coal mine.
You need to assess what the appropriate financial reporting options are for depreciation of this
piece of equipment.
Issue:
A piece of mining equipment was purchased during the year for $100,000. It is to be used over
the next 5 years. The equipment is expected to have no salvage value and its production is
expected to be Year 1 – 10%, Year 2 – 25%, Year 3 – 35%, Year 4 – 20%, Year 5 – 10%. We
need to determine the appropriate method of depreciation.
GAAP:
As per IAS 16.43 Each separate component with a significant cost of the asset must be
depreciated separately. As per IAS 16.50 The depreciable amount of an asset shall be allocated
in a systemic basis over its useful life.
Analysis:
As the equipment is one large loader, there are no separately identifiable components.
Depreciation:
There are a options as to the type of method the company could select which we will discuss.
Straight line:
The asset could be depreciated evenly over its useful life of 5 years. This would result is
depreciation of $20,000 being recognized each year. This method is best used when the asset
is evenly used over its useful life.
Declining balance:
The asset could be depreciated using the declining balance method. If 20% were used this
would result in the following depreciation being recognized each year:
Opening Depreciation Closing
Year 1 100,000 20,000 80,000
Year 2 80,000 16,000 64,000
Year 3 64,000 12,800 51,200
Year 4 51,200 10,240 40,960
Year 5 40,960 8,190 32,770
This method is best used when the use of the asset is greater at the beginning of its useful life.
Activity Method:
The asset could be depreciated using an activity method whereby the asset would be
depreciated by the amount of production it completes in a given year compared to the total
production it is expected over the useful life. If this method were used it would result in the
following depreciation
Year 1 - $10,000; Year 2 - $25,000; Year 3 - $35,000; Year 4 - $20,000; Year 5 - $10,000.
This method is best when activity levels drive the life of the asset.
Recommendation:
Consistent with the guidance from IAS 16.43 there are no different components to depreciate
separately as such the asset will be depreciated as one item. Consistent with the guidance
from IAS 16.50 the asset should be depreciated using the activity method (units of production)
as this is the most systematic treatment of the asset.

Formatting
When formatting your memo, you want to produce a professional document. Some general tips
to follow:

 Memo format (Word)

 Use Heading and subheadings
 5-7 sentences per paragraph
 Appropriate use of bullet points and tables
 Use white space
 Utilize Spell/Grammar check
 Font size 12 and Arial type
 Remember your audience – you need to ensure your tone and word selection is
appropriate for whom you are writing to.

Tips and Tricks

 Ensure you have a balance discussion – if you are discussing the pros and cons or risks
and opportunities, this means you need to address BOTH sides
 Quantitative Qualitative Conclusion (QQC) – Anytime you prepare a Quantitative
assessment make sure you follow it with a qualitative discussion and a conclusion
 Explain the WHY – Whenever you are explaining points to your user, you need to make
sure you explaining WHY this should be important to them – what is the impact? Why
should the user care?
 Write to your user – Make sure you are tailoring your response to your user and their
specific set of circumstances/case facts
 Highlight your recommendations – it is easy to do by using a heading
“Recommendation”

Conclusion
Case writing is a critical skill to develop. As you progress through your student career it will
become an increasingly important component of your assessment. In the real world you need
to communicate the good and bad aspects of someone’s work in a meaningful but not hurtful
way.