Category: Emerging Tech

New! Tableau Prep (ETL) Project: KAT Concession Supply

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Screenshot
Request project at this link

Today we are releasing the data cleaning project for Tableau Prep. This is the fourth of ten projects that focus on data cleaning and analytics. Tableau Prep is a nice option to have available for your students because it runs on both a Mac and Windows operating system.  Keep reading to learn how to request this first beginner level project that uses Tableau Prep for data cleaning and Tableau for data analytics.

A key step in data analytics is getting the data ready for use – in fact, this step can take more time and effort than the analysis of the data. This brand-new Tableau Prep project focuses on the data cleaning aspect of data analytics and is appropriate for introductory accounting – but could be adapted to any accounting class. This Google Sheets case is designed to guide students through data cleaning and data analysis with step-by-step tutorial videos.

KAT Concession Supply is a fictitious company that supplies food, paper products, and other items to fairs, amusement parks, and other organizations. Information in the KAT Concession Supply data sets includes information about its sales over a three-year period. The data from KAT Concession Supply has errors and irregularities in it and it must be cleaned so that an interactive dashboard about its operations can be prepared. This Tableau Prep project is classified as beginner because it takes less than an hour to complete the entire project and the steps are pretty basic.

Complete step-by-step tutorial videos and an instructor guide are available to make project adoption easy and painless in accounting courses. The project is available at no cost for instructors to use in their classes.

Beginner project for Tableau Prep

The ETL and other tasks in the beginner version of the Tableau Prep data cleaning project are:

  1. Input and view the data.
  2. Identify and remove duplicate records.
  3. Remove unwanted spaces and characters from fields.
  4. Convert dates stored as text to fields formatted as dates.
  5. Find and replace text.
  6. Split one field into two fields.
  7. Remove empty columns and rename columns
  8. Create and output file.
  9. Correct spelling errors in the saved output file.
  10. Create a two-visualization interactive dashboard.

Tutorial videos/PDFs

Complete step-by-step instructions are provided for this project. Students have the choice of viewing the tutorial videos or downloading a pdf file of the annotated slides. The tutorials for this project have been split into two parts:

  1. Part 1: Data cleaning tutorial (video | pdf)
  2. Part 2: Dashboard tutorial (video | pdf)

***You can obtain the Instructor Guide for the KAT Concession Supply beginning data cleaning project for Google Sheets by requesting it at this link.*** The instructor guide contains the data set, solutions, and other information.

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 project resources we have developed. Thank you!)

News flash: This data cleaning project is the fourth project in a set of ten data cleaning and visualization projects developed by Tracie Miller-Nobles, Wendy Tietz, and me. We will be releasing new projects approximately twice a month for the remainder of 2022. These projects will be available in three levels: Beginner (five data cleaning techniques plus two-visualization dashboard); Intermediate (beginner steps with seven additional data cleaning techniques plus three-visualization dashboard); and Advanced (intermediate steps with additional data cleaning techniques plus four-visualization dashboard.) In addition, the projects will be available in four software tool combinations: Excel, Google Sheets, Tableau Prep combined with Tableau, and Alteryx combined with Power BI.

New! Beginning Data Cleaning (ETL) & Analytics Project for Alteryx: KAT Concession Supply

Tracie Miller-NoblesLeave a comment

This is the second of ten projects in a set that focus on data cleaning and analytics! Read on for how to request this first beginning level project that uses Alteryx for data cleaning and analytics.

Image of opening slide of Alteryx Beginner project.

A key step in data analytics is getting the data ready for use – in fact, this step can take more time and effort than the analysis of the data. This brand-new Alteryx project focuses on the data cleaning aspect of data analytics and is appropriate for introductory accounting – but could be adapted to any accounting class.

KAT Concession Supply is a fictitious company that supplies food, paper products, and other items to fairs, amusement parks, and other organizations. Information in the KAT Concession Supply data sets includes information about its sales over a three-year period. The data from KAT Concession Supply has errors and irregularities in it and it must be cleaned so that an interactive dashboard about its operations can be prepared. This Alteryx project is classified as beginner because it takes less than an hour to complete the entire project and the Alteryx steps are pretty basic.

Complete step-by-step tutorial videos and an instructor guide are available to make project adoption easy and painless in accounting courses. The project is available at no cost for instructors to use in their classes.

Beginner project for Alteryx

The data cleaning and other tasks in the beginner version of the Alteryx data cleaning project are:

  1. Input and view data
  2. Identify and remove duplicate records
  3. Remove unwanted characters such as spaces and nonprintable characters from fields
  4. Convert dates stored as text to fields formatted as dates
  5. Find and replace text with replacement text
  6. Split one field into two fields
  7. Remove empty columns and rename columns
  8. Save new file to Excel
  9. Correct spelling errors in Excel
  10. Create a two-visualization interactive dashboard

Tutorial videos/PDFs

Complete step-by-step instructions are provided for this project. Students have the choice of viewing the tutorial videos or downloading a pdf file of the annotated slides. The tutorials for this project have been split into two parts. You can view the tutorial videos here as a preview of this project:

  1. Part 1: Data cleaning tutorial (video | pdf)
  2. Part 2: Dashboard tutorial (video | pdf)

***You can obtain the Instructor Guide for the KAT Concession Supply beginning data cleaning project for Excel and Alteryx by requesting it at this link.*** The instructor guide contains the data set, solutions, and other information.

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 project resources we have developed. Thank you!)

News flash: This data cleaning project is the second project in a set of ten data cleaning and visualization projects developed by Wendy Tietz, Jennifer Cainas, and me. We will be releasing new projects approximately twice a month for the remainder of 2022. These projects will be available in three levels: Beginner (five data cleaning techniques plus two-visualization dashboard); Intermediate (beginner steps with seven additional data cleaning techniques plus three-visualization dashboard); and Advanced (intermediate steps with additional data cleaning techniques plus four-visualization dashboard.) In addition, the projects will be available in four software tool combinations: Excel, Google Sheets, Tableau Prep combined with Tableau, and Alteryx combined with Power BI.

New! Beginning Data Cleaning (ETL) & Analytics Project for Excel: KAT Concession Supply

Dr. Wendy Tietz, CPA, CMA, CSCA, CGMALeave a comment

We are super excited to share the first of ten projects in a set that focus on data cleaning and analytics! Read on for how to request this first beginning level project that uses Excel for data cleaning and analytics.

A key step in data analytics is getting the data ready for use – in fact, this step can take more time and effort than the analysis of the data. This brand-new Excel project focuses on the data cleaning aspect of data analytics and is appropriate for introductory accounting – but could be adapted to any accounting class.

KAT Concession Supply is a fictitious company that supplies food, paper products, and other items to fairs, amusement parks, and other organizations. Information in the KAT Concession Supply data sets includes information about its sales over a three-year period. The data from KAT Concession Supply has errors and irregularities in it and it must be cleaned so that an interactive dashboard about its operations can be prepared. This Excel project is classified as beginner because it takes less than an hour to complete the entire project and the Excel steps are pretty basic.

Complete step-by-step tutorial videos and an instructor guide are available to make project adoption easy and painless in accounting courses. The project is available at no cost for instructors to use in their classes.

Beginner project for Excel

The data cleaning and other tasks in the beginner version of the Excel data cleaning project are:

  1. Widen all columns to automatically fit the contents
  2. Find and remove duplicate records
  3. Remove unwanted characters such as numbers, spaces, and nonprintable characters from fields
  4. Find and replace text with replacement text
  5. Change the case of a text field to uppercase or lowercase
  6. Format numbers
  7. Create a two-visualization interactive dashboard

Tutorial videos/PDFs

Complete step-by-step instructions are provided for this project. Students have the choice of viewing the tutorial videos or downloading a pdf file of the annotated slides. The tutorials for this project have been split into two parts. You can view the tutorial videos here as a preview of this project:

  1. Part 1: Data cleaning tutorial (video | pdf)
  2. Part 2: Dashboard tutorial (video | pdf)

***You can obtain the Instructor Guide for the KAT Concession Supply beginning data cleaning project for Excel by requesting it at this link.*** The instructor guide contains the data set, solutions, and other information.

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 project resources we have developed. Thank you!)

News flash: This data cleaning project is the first project in a set of ten data cleaning and visualization projects developed by Tracie Miller-Nobles, Jennifer Cainas, and me. We will be releasing new projects approximately twice a month for the remainder of 2022. These projects will be available in three levels: Beginner (five data cleaning techniques plus two-visualization dashboard); Intermediate (beginner steps with seven additional data cleaning techniques plus three-visualization dashboard); and Advanced (intermediate steps with additional data cleaning techniques plus four-visualization dashboard.) In addition, the projects will be available in four software tool combinations: Excel, Google Sheets, Tableau Prep combined with Tableau, and Alteryx combined with Power BI.

RPA screenshot

Hello Bot RPA project for introductory accounting using Automation Anywhere

Dr. Wendy Tietz, CPA, CMA, CSCA, CGMALeave a comment

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a software system that can observe a person or user performing a task, recognizes patterns in that user activity, and creates a “bot” to replicate that person’s task processes. A bot can also be built using a series of commands that replicate what the person does to accomplish the task. A bot (or software robot) is an RPA program that performs repetitive tasks that are based on rules. Tasks are considered rule-based when a clear set of rules, when answered, determine how the task is performed.

Automation Anywhere is an RPA software vendor.  Automation Anywhere has a Community Edition that is mostly web-based that is free to use. Other top vendors of RPA software include UiPath and Blue Prism.

This RPA project will introduce your students to RPA and bots – and it will walk your students through the process to create their first bot using Automation Anywhere. With this project, the student builds a bot that asks the user for their name. The student-created bot will then display a message that says “Hello, <name>. The day and time is <today’s date.>” It is a simple bot but introduces the student to the concept of what RPA is and what a bot is.

You can find the Word document for this Hello Bot project at this link. The project document contains complete instructions for the project, from signing up for a free account at Automation Anywhere, to building the bot. The document contains links for resources, including a tutorial video on building the bot.

As always, you are free to use and adapt the Hello Bot project with your own classes. Please do not republish it without express written permission from the authors of Accounting Is Analytics. Thank you!

Introducing emerging tech in introductory accounting

Dr. Wendy Tietz, CPA, CMA, CSCA, CGMA2 Comments

We have a lot to cover in introductory financial accounting and in introductory managerial accounting. However, to only show students the manual way of doing things (i.e., pencil, paper, calculator) is doing them a disservice – they don’t get to see how accounting is much more than rote calculations.

I think certain emerging technology topics are appropriate for introductory accounting. I have developed a few Robotic Process Automation (RPA) that are suitable for intro accounting – one is a simple Hello World bot and another one is a bot that takes a selfie of itself while it runs. I have also developed a few Python projects for absolute beginners that will work in introductory accounting.

There will also be some other emerging tech projects posted here on blockchain, ETL, and others.

I am going to be using the RPA projects and the Python projects in my own classes in Spring 2020. Once I work through any bumps, I will be sharing those projects here. Stay tuned….

Wendy