Financial Accounting

Knowledge of accounting is a core requirement to any career in business – whatever you choose to specialize in - finance, marketing, strategy or human resources. The accounting system provides much of the data needed to make business decisions. The aim of this course is to ensure that this essential building block is firmly in place at the outset of your business education. This course is designed to provide you with a comprehensive, graduate level introduction to accounting. It will provide you with the foundations of accounting - the concepts and mechanics; and to help develop a perspective for the intelligent use of accounting information. You will learn about the system used by firms for providing reports to external constituents such as stock holders, debt holders and potential investors. At the beginning of the course, I will assume that you have never seen accounting before! But, by the end of the course you should be able to read and interpret financial accounting reports and evaluate any firm’s economic performance and financial position. The course is organized into two interrelated modules. First, we will learn the accounting process - how information is recorded, organized and collated to produce the reports. This includes an examination of the main financial statements, the nature of accrual measurement, revenue recognition, assets, liabilities and equity. The first half of the course is the foundation. In the second half, we will dissect the balance sheet by systematically going through financial reports and learn to analyze the relevant information provided in the balance sheet and related footnotes.