Capstone Report Template: Fill & Download for Free

Not exactly. The time when it was easiest was when the internet was there but not as developed as now.The big change was actually word processing.Prior to that copying another student’s work still meant writing it out. There was an academic joke that at least it meant you had read a good report and written it out again, so perhaps you had learned something.Let me tell you two of my experiences.In the late 1990’s I was reading and assessing a student’s major chemical engineering capstone design project when something odd about it struck. Specifically the gasket material in a distillation column, only a tiny detail in a major design of a chemical plant. It was quite unnecessary for the temperature and sort of chemicals being used, but would have been sensible for another chemical process.I went down into the basement where previous design projects were stored along with examination papers for five years. This was so that if any issue were to arise, they could be marked again. I remembered that a colleague had set the particular chemical process a couple of years back.A search through discovered a report which had clearly acted as a template for the distillation column design, with only the details edited. A particular national group were sharing disks of coursework which had had good marks for the next generation,. The copyist failed his degree, of course.As an academic, all I got was printed copies while students could pass on files on disks, CDs and email, while I had to rely on memory and be willing to give up time for what might be a fruitless search. And while I might remember my own projects, copying from another academic must have seemed a very low risk.It was even harder when material was copied from another university. I detected this from the references in a project report which included items not available in our library and omitted a couple of obvious ones which were.I knew where the student came from and checked the library catalogue of his home university (an early thing to be made available on the internet), which made it seem the references might be there, so contacted an academic in the equivalent department, who checked the appropriate reports and found the one which had been copied.Another student failed the degree and I acquired a quite useful reputation for supernatural powers in detection of cheating.However, the point is not my detection but the vast number of cases which must have been going undetected.When we started getting students to submit electronically, it suddenly became easier to make a check against (say) last year’s laboratory reports. AS search engines developed I was able to search to see if a particular phrase occurred on the public web, Students who copied from Wikipedia were at particular risk when Google came in.It was easier to copy, but easier to be found out. There then followed a escalation of the war between the cheats and the academics, in which the Turnitin database became a significant factor.So the time it was easiest was when the internet facilitated file sharing, but not searches.

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Yes, absolutely you can. Here is one way to be fired like that- almost like a whistleblower I guess.I was working for a SMB in the hardware supply industry (pallet sized inventory catering to certain kinds of contractors, a few million in revenue/yr). It was a full charge bookkeeper position I applied to. I was told it was mainly accounts receivable and ledger data entry to take the load off of the bookkeeper who had to go part-time. Sounded easy enough, I knew the merchandise, pay wasn’t minimum wage, and it was a clean, (I thought) chill summer job.The managing owner must have thought I was young, lazy, shy (ie would shut my mouth) and simply had some excel knowledge which meant I could type on the magic box called a computer- that is what I am forced to believe given what happened. Honestly, in general, the owner was a dick. The employees would agree with me, I would tell my family stories verbatim with dropped mouths, and no matter my bias some stuff is just unmistakable. However, that is not the story.Long story short: I never confronted the managing owner, but I was close. Having a decent accounting, finance, tax, business info systems and small business management background I started asking (actually innocent) questions. Some included what the “monthly accountant” (PC illiterate bookkeeper, likely embezzling with the managing owner) specific duties were and where her invoice was to put into quickbooks; being curious why/how the managing owner could deduct pay he authorized from one pay period to the next from new employees; asking about credit card purchases that make no sense and why a CC statement was treated like a bill, not an account; personally being hesitant to mislead the shareholders and pay the managing owner’s wife who was not an employee, contractor, or owner; and a few more.I could have simply never questioned a thing, not acted like a bookkeeper, not spent the time to go through certain paperwork thoroughly, not spent time after work verifying laws or stood up for my co-workers who could not eat for a week if the owner decided to secretly deduct hours from their paycheck because he changed his mind about last month’s holiday pay.——————————————————————————————If you are curious, here are some examples that jump out at me, getting funnier as you go down:(if you are wondering why my job became AR/AP, payroll/timecard machine, “partially” closing the books, balancing register, preparing financial statements, making projections, etc…I honestly do not know…the old bookkeeper just came in like an hour a week)In bookkeeping/accounting, one must monthly “close the books” so to speak.This is a simple process of reconciling your accounts with your books with the bank’s books (like balancing a checkbook). I noticed that the company credit cards were never free, the managing owner always had them. Credit card accounts are like bank accounts- they must be reconciled. I looked at our credit card statements and saw many suspicious charges. (no SMB hardware store buys a $150 dinner on sunday, especially with no client meetings). I saw diesel charges, which is logical as the company vehicle is diesel, except it had not been in company use for weeks (guess what fuel did the managing owner’s truck use?). I was told originally to just treat the credit card statement as a bill, clearly so I would not do standard procedure and match a bill/receipt to each line item).I was not allowed to reconcile the company’s bank account. We had to pay an “accountant” (not a CPA, in my state, called oneself that is illegal) $400+ to do something that would take me 2–3 hours. I was told even “if I knew how,” the accountant still calculates sales tax. Those who know quickbooks are facepalming. Sales tax is an auto calculation assuming you enter transactions correctly. I almost got fired for asking the accountant if I could watch her reconcile the bank account “to learn” so I could set up the credit card as an account, not a bill, so that it could be reconciled.This goes with number 2. I think the “accountant” was defrauding the corporation with the managing owner. She did not know how to use the accountant’s copy feature of quickbooks (a simply thing to use). So when she reconciled our accountants and took several days, I could not enter new transactions or do anything. Without using the accountant’s copy feature (send last month’s books to your accountant through the internet usually or a hard copy), I had to backup a copy of our QB file on a flash drive and give it to her, then restore our whole QB file when I got the flash drive back. She could have modified soooo much every month.Rather than using quickbooks reporting features, I would have to copy and paste our vital financial figures to a excel template monthly (a ghetto combo of part of the assets/liabilities of a balance sheet and part of an income statement) to send to the other 5 owners. I was strictly told, under no circumstance, was I to prepare the letter without stopping all urgent work to: enter in all recurring payments or payments from huge clients to accounts receivable (without payment arriving), catch up on every single accounts receivable payment, pay all company bills and prepay anything else till the bank balance was as low as possible. I was also to enter all accounts payable to increase our liabilities. Basically: Make the company look like it had zero extra cash, and the reason was so that “my brother’s (out of state owners, family business) don’t think they should get paid more.”This was social security fraud I think or just more stockholder fraud, or likely both. When doing payroll, all employees were salaried. Before I started “helping” the bookkeeper, the managing owner’s wife had done some office work. She was the only salaried employee- she still got her salary. She for sure did not work for the company. However, she got a W-2, FICA taxes for social security, and of course money.This is my favorite one. Myself as a summer employee, and two new hires were all under 90 days employment. Per company policy, we were supposed to get a dollar less an hour till 90 days, and I guess not get holiday pay? The managing owner did not follow the dollar less an hour police for probies. A holiday came up. I am no expert on employment law, but I worked 35+ hrs/wk, and the two new hires worked at least 25 hrs/wk. He never told us about this policy of no holiday pay, it was not in our “hire” packet, nor was it told verbally to us.So, we had this little “time card” machine. Prior to payroll, I printed each employee’s monthly summary sheet, stapled their monthly schedule to it, stapled any sick/vacation days, paid training, overtime days, etc. This time was no different, except before I did the holiday pay I asked him if he wanted me to put the holiday pay straight into quickbooks or into the timecard as a normal or extra shift. He told me to put it in the timecard. I print the timecard summaries and give them to him, he reviews them, signs them and gives them back to me the next day. After this, I print all the checks who have pay stubs with the hour breakdown. I give the checks to him, he looks through them, and signs them. Fun part: next month, he tells me to subtract the holiday pay from the two employees and myself as he “changed his mind.” I spoke to my 10 unit shy of an HR degree GF and my union arbitrator friend (the latter found me the actual law…) that it was illegal.So, after I politely asked if he was sure that was okay (it was less than $200 dollars), he said he was sure. Not long after, I got the termination speech for not being fast enough, hurting his accountant’s feeling by making her feel useless since I acted like I could reconcile accounts in quickbooks (if one can check boxes, one can do that), and a few other reasons. He also said, with a wink, that he would let me keep the holiday pay and gave me a $100 gift card. I actually think I was bribed? (did not matter much, was not gonna risk my tax license over that job, quitting was soon to happen).If you care to read, for a laugh, at how incompetent the managing owner was then read my resume relevant highlights that I verbalized during my interview:1) Prior to transferring I: completed my college’s Intro Financial and Managerial accounting courses and business law (for majors); did all the lower division Math and CS major courses; and took the “Bookkeeping Capstone” course (to get me certified through an organization as a bookkeeper).2) At my uni: I had taken operations science/management (to impress…somebody); lived with an accounting major and watched his intermediate financial accounting and cost accounting courses lectures, homework, and textbooks with him; helped someone with an employment law course.3) Finally, I was finishing up my last special enrollment exam to be a federal Enrolled Agent of the IRS; was a credentialed state tax preparer; worked doing taxes, though only had a season of experience; tutored accounting, quickbooks, and excel/database software at my college; and finally worked for the uni’s distance ed program for a few years as an evening classroom supervisor/proctor (babysitter) when it was the business small business concentration for two years and then the business info systems/supply chain concentration- I basically audited human resources, small business law, the core and SMB finance courses, SMB accounting, and several supply chain operation/info system courses among other things.Ohh yeah, my GF was a graduating HR major and my best friend’s dad was a senior arbitrator/VP of something of a *big* nation wide union (I won’t mention).