HCAFA case studies
HCAFA · Put your knowledge to work in context.
HCAFA is a professional certification exam aimed at candidates who want to demonstrate competence across the breadth of accounting and finance work rather than a single narrow specialty. Its five domains - financial accounting and reporting, financial management and analysis, strategic management and decision making, business law and ethics, and information technology and data analytics - suggest a profile suited to accountants, finance analysts, controllers, and auditors who increasingly need to move between reporting, planning, and data work in the same role. The HCAFA case studies are 5 cases and about 2,321 words.
1The Grant Revenue Timing Question
Northbridge Community Health, a nonprofit, receives a 600,000 grant from a state agency in October Year 1 to fund a diabetes screening program running January through December Year 2. The award letter states the funds are restricted to program costs incurred in Year 2 and that unspent funds must be returned.
427 words, about 2 min2The Acquisition That Looks Accretive but Isn't
Ridgeline Manufacturing (market cap 480M, 40M shares at 12) is considering acquiring Corva Components for 300M cash. Corva has EBITDA of 40M, EBIT of 28M, and net income of 18M.
448 words, about 2 min3The Plant Closure Decision Under a Capacity Constraint
Halden Foods operates three plants. Plant C loses 4M per year on a full-cost basis: revenue 60M, variable costs 42M, fixed costs 22M (of which 9M is allocated corporate overhead and 13M is plant-specific, including 5M of depreciation on equipment with no resale value and 8M of avoidable cash costs).
473 words, about 2 min4The Whistleblower and the Revenue Cutoff
A controller at Verano Systems receives an anonymous hotline report alleging that the sales team shipped $2.3M of product in the last week of Q4 to a distributor with a side letter granting unlimited return rights through March. The controller investigates and finds the side letter, unsigned by Verano but emailed by the VP of Sales.
500 words, about 3 min5The Dashboard That Passes Every Check
A retail bank deploys a machine-learning model to flag suspicious transactions for its AML team. Validation shows 96% accuracy on the holdout set.
473 words, about 2 min