Financial Accounting
This is the fourth of seven courses in the Foundations of Business Program. The course will examine the fundamentals of accounting, including understanding financial statements, cash flows, and reporting.
Price: $299
Modality: Self-Paced, Online
Time Required: Approximately 30 hours
Overview
Accounting is often called the language of business. Using the vocabulary and grammar of this language, a business entity communicates with those interested in its activities such as investors, creditors, and regulators.
The primary focus of Financial Accounting is the preparation, understanding, and analysis of financial statements – income statement, balance sheet and the statement of cash flows. These statements report a company’s profitability and financial health and are useful to all economic agents who are engaged with the firm. The purpose of this course is to provide you with the concepts and tools needed to understand and effectively use a company’s external or financial accounting information system.
Learning Objectives
- Utilize accounting techniques to evaluate the financial health of a company
- Analyze how financial transactions impact financial statements
- Use available computing technology (e.g., spreadsheets) interpret make inferences about underlying populations
- Utilize financial statements to make informed managerial inferences and decisions
The primary focus of Financial Accounting is the preparation, understanding, and analysis of financial statements – income statement, balance sheet and the statement of cash flows. These statements report a company’s profitability and financial health and are useful to all economic agents who are engaged with the firm. The purpose of this course is to provide you with the concepts and tools needed to understand and effectively use a company’s external or financial accounting information system.
This is an asynchronous self-paced course. This means that you can work at your own speed.There are videos, reading, interactive practices and knowledge check questions. There are also module review questions at the end of each module. All of it is meant to help guide you through the topics and concepts in this course and get you ready for the final exam. As this course is quantitative in nature, our goal is to give you as much practice as possible. Some modules cover more topics and as such might have more practice and review questions. These are non-graded activities meant to help you master the content and prepare you for the Final Exam.
Modules
Module 1: Study of Financial Statements
The first module will focus on why financial statements are important to us. You will carry this information throughout the rest of the course, and it will provide a strong foundation for your understanding of financial accounting.
Module 2: Accounting for Adjustments
In this module, we will review adjustments and their effect on financial statements. We will practice adjusting entries and see how financial statements are adjusted at the end of every year for the purpose of making the financial statements accurate.
Module 3: Accounting and Reporting of Assets
In Module 3, we will look into inventory and receivables and how to report and interpret them based on information available on the financial statements. We will also explore Long-Term Assets and apply various principles and methods to understand the different effects that certain actions can have on the assets.
Module 4: Accounting & Reporting for Liability & Stakeholders' Equity
In this module, you will learn about the accounting procedures and financial ratios used to report and interpret liabilities, and how they influence credit ratings. Although we focus on corporate reporting and analyses, this chapter can also help you to understand the kind of information others use to evaluate your open personal credit rating.
We will be also exploring the role of stock and stockholders within a corporation. Through analysis of stockholders' equity, you'll be able to understand the role that it plays in financial accounting within corporations.
Module 5: Accounting for Statement of Cash Flows
In this module, we will look into the statement of cash flows and interpret cash flows from different activities within the corporation. By using different methods, we will be able to prepare a complete statement of cash flows.
