This website is dedicated to the teaching of accounting.
When teachers, parents and students think about accounting, what is their typical perception?
None of this is true with Color Accounting education technology. Perfected over twenty years in the corporate education world, it is now available for academic eduction after an extensive R&D project conducted over five years in South Africa, the US and the UK.
Professor Paul Healy, Head of the Accounting Unit at Harvard Business School said "Color Accounting has the advantage of showing how accounting works visually. We all tend to see problems and relationships more easily visually, so the approach takes advantage of how we learn most effectively. As such, I believe that it is of value to anyone who is interested in understanding how accounting works (from high school students to MBAs to business executives)."
When teachers, parents and students think about accounting, what is their typical perception?
- Difficult to teach and learn?
- Students need to be proficient in math?
- Boring?
- Extremely low (raw score) pass rates?
- High school students struggle to understand accrual accounting, so we mostly avoid it?
- Rote learning - key concepts must be memorized with no real understanding?
- We need to use a lot of 'fun' activities like games and simulations, even though they are not real accounting?
- T-accounts are the devil?
None of this is true with Color Accounting education technology. Perfected over twenty years in the corporate education world, it is now available for academic eduction after an extensive R&D project conducted over five years in South Africa, the US and the UK.
Professor Paul Healy, Head of the Accounting Unit at Harvard Business School said "Color Accounting has the advantage of showing how accounting works visually. We all tend to see problems and relationships more easily visually, so the approach takes advantage of how we learn most effectively. As such, I believe that it is of value to anyone who is interested in understanding how accounting works (from high school students to MBAs to business executives)."
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Debits and credits are initially introduced using coded color ('greens' and 'yellows').
This is a working model of an accrual-based accounting system - not a game or simulation. |
Color Accounting in action using the Pizza Box product.
Two Hilton College (high school) students in South Africa demonstrating the hands-on Color Accounting approach by analyzing cash flows through the bank account. The 'greens' and 'yellows' are the debits and credits. "Accounting is easy when you can see it" (and touch it)! |
At the heart of Color Accounting is the powerful BaSIS Framework™. This revolutionary graphical interface 'accounting-on-a-page' model has changed accounting education forever. It means that the three required 'links' for understanding and using accounting literacy are easily learned:
- Structure: the spatial relationships between the balance sheet and the income statement, debits and credits and the five elements of the general ledger including profit - all on one page to see, point to and touch.
- Language: accounting is replete with poorly distinguished and confusing terminology. Color Accounting carefully distinguishes the key terminology with precision so the students can both understand and use it confidently.
- Mechanics: the increases and decreases in the general ledger to record the financial effect of business events. Students can both see and touch the inner workings of the accounting system and connect a the financial effect of a specific business event through to the impact of that event on the financial story of that organization.
Color Accounting is powerful at any level of academic education from year 8 or 9 at high school all the way through to advanced degrees. at university. In this site we will be using the following nomenclature when we refer to academic education:
Secondary: [middle and high school] grade 7 through grade 12 or equivalent
Tertiary: universities and the like, awarding recognized qualifications: certificates, diplomas, degrees and advanced degrees.
Secondary: [middle and high school] grade 7 through grade 12 or equivalent
Tertiary: universities and the like, awarding recognized qualifications: certificates, diplomas, degrees and advanced degrees.
Secondary Education
Color Accounting creates a happy place for your introductory accounting students. Whether your students are doing bookkeeping (accounting tech), accounting, business, personal finance, entrepreneurial studies or whatever else needs an accounting foundation, Color Accounting is the gold standard in putting down those all important foundations: quick, simple, fun and effective.
The best option for your students is to 'front-end' your existing curriculum with the Color Accounting Bootcamp. You might think that this will further strain an already overcrowded curriculum, but you will actually find the opposite. Content areas that previously took a certain amount of time to teach will become much faster because of the Color Accounting methodology. And of course the Bootcamp will also replace some elements of your curriculum, wholly and partially.
The best option for your students is to 'front-end' your existing curriculum with the Color Accounting Bootcamp. You might think that this will further strain an already overcrowded curriculum, but you will actually find the opposite. Content areas that previously took a certain amount of time to teach will become much faster because of the Color Accounting methodology. And of course the Bootcamp will also replace some elements of your curriculum, wholly and partially.
The Color Accounting Boot Camp (ABC) approach typically accelerates much of your traditional curriculum,
and provides deeper and richer understanding.
and provides deeper and richer understanding.
Some schools prefer to use a 'full curriculum approach' to Color Accounting and blend it into their existing curriculum material over one or two years. See the MORE menu above for a 60 lesson, 2 year 'Curriculum Approach'.
Alternatively, some teachers take a 'hybrid' approach. They do the Bootcamp first, and then use some of the lessons from the Curriculum Approach to swap out additional parts of their traditional curriculum.
If you would like some advice on what would work best for you and your students, please visit our support page Centers Of Excellence. Here you will find Color Accounting Educators who are at the top of their field and will be happy to advise you.
Alternatively, some teachers take a 'hybrid' approach. They do the Bootcamp first, and then use some of the lessons from the Curriculum Approach to swap out additional parts of their traditional curriculum.
If you would like some advice on what would work best for you and your students, please visit our support page Centers Of Excellence. Here you will find Color Accounting Educators who are at the top of their field and will be happy to advise you.
Tertiary Education
Foundation level accounting, often referred to as Accounting-101, quite rightly is a component of many other courses. In the MBA, our anecdotal global experience is that accounting is the most feared, and failed, subject of all. Quite frankly, that is a disgrace.
The Color Accounting Bootcamp approach is perfect fo these applications. An intensive and focussed approach, in a single day the students can become accounting literate and ready for whatever additional content your course requires them to master. The beauty of this approach is that you can continue to use your existing text books.
If you would like some advice on what would work best for you and your students, please visit our support page Centers Of Excellence. Here you will find Color Accounting Educators who are at the top of their field and will be happy to advise you.
The Color Accounting Bootcamp approach is perfect fo these applications. An intensive and focussed approach, in a single day the students can become accounting literate and ready for whatever additional content your course requires them to master. The beauty of this approach is that you can continue to use your existing text books.
If you would like some advice on what would work best for you and your students, please visit our support page Centers Of Excellence. Here you will find Color Accounting Educators who are at the top of their field and will be happy to advise you.
Notes:
- We have been trialling a Learning Management System (online) approach in the UK which we hope that it will be available for general use with the start of the 2020-21 US school year.
- We are in the process of creating an abridged version of the Full Curriculum by key content areas.
Companion Site for Teachers and Lecturers
If you are an accounting teacher, lecturer or tutor at your university, college or high school (or a homeschool parent), you will want access to the Color Accounting Educators' Resource Center as it contains all of your guidance and instructional materials for running the Color Accounting Bootcamp.
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"Color Accounting has the advantage of showing how accounting works visually. We all tend to see problems and relationships more easily visually, so the approach takes advantage of how we learn most effectively. As such, I believe that it is of value to anyone who is interested in understanding how accounting works (from high school students to MBAs to business executives)."
- Professor Paul Healy, Head of Accounting Unit, Harvard Business School |
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"Why do I like Colour Accounting? Well, you can see the whole picture of what happened, on one board. You can see how every transaction impacts the whole system.
With kids, accounting is a difficult subject to understand - because you normally don’t know WHY you are debiting and crediting things, you don’t understand how things fit together. You’re just going from one thing to the other. It’s quite abstract. With Colour Accounting it’s all on one diagram and it all makes so much sense. And you understand the concepts so much better. And I love the interactiveness of it. Just last week I met a boy who is joining us in Grade 11. I asked him 'What do you find hard about accounting?' He said 'I don’t understand how it all fits together.' So I showed him the BaSIS Framework and he just said 'Wow. Totally simplified.' - Anne Kriel, Head of Department, Hilton College |
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"I am looking forward to once again using CA materials as the opening component to my accounting class here at Tunghai University in Taiwan. CA has become a distinguishing and unique feature. It is always interesting to ask my freshman students on day #1 what they feel when they see the word "accounting". The responses are always very negative: "fear", "terrified", "hard math". It takes Color Accounting to bring down the fears and put smiles on faces. Thank you so much for making a difference!"
- James S. Gillespie, Tunghai University International College, Taiwan |
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"Word got out about Color Accounting and we have a long waiting list for the workshop. Our facilitators are now running two seminars a month just for staff members." - Louis Biggie, Director, Learning Solutions, Talent Management and Organization Development, Johns Hopkins University |
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"Attached please find the informal evaluations from your skills institute. They are excellent! In my role as Program Coordinator, these are the strongest evaluations I've seen. Thank you for teaching such a fantastic course!" "Color Accounting has been the best class I've ever taken," Social Enterprise, Masters Student |
"This course has been the most beneficial and clear training I have ever had with double entry bookkeeping. I have taken two other classes before in an attempt to grasp the concepts of debit and credit accounts and the increasing and decreasing affects on both of them. Although starting this course scared me to death that I might face another failure, I was very grateful to all those who have put in so much work to make this something I could actually grasp and understand! Words just cannot express!! Thank you!" Adult student
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