After reading Chapter 3 and reviewing the online videos, you should have a good understanding of the various approaches and tools necessary to compute and prepare schedules for direct materials placed in production, cost of goods manufactured, and cost of goods sold. The book exercises and the videos give you three "methods" to compute and work problems to calculate these figures. The first is simply by way of a formula...(i.e. beginning finished goods + cost of goods manufactured - ending finished goods = cost of goods sold). The second was by visualizing the flow of goods throughout the various T accounts for Raw Materials, Work in Process, and Finished Goods. The third was to prepare journal entries in order to compute each of these amounts, which is similar to the approach of the T-accounts, although perhaps arguably less visual.

For this discussion, I'd like you to tell me which method you prefer of the three discussed above to perform calculations for direct materials placed in production, cost of goods manufactured and cost of goods sold. For example, which is more intuitive and why? Instead, is there some combination of methods that makes more sense to you?