Follow The Cash: Lessons For Capstone Business Courses

Abstract

Capstone business students struggle to understand and interrelate all of the strategies and functions of companies. Yet each of those strategies and functions has the purpose of directly or indirectly producing cash flows for the company. We therefore propose that following a company’s cash flows can provide effective lessons for capstone business courses. In this exploratory paper, we examine the importance of cash from three perspectives: the company’s, the investor’s, and the accountant’s. We then examine how emerging accounting movements make following cash flows easier for non-accountants and how capstone business instructors might infuse some follow-the-cash lessons into their classrooms.