This course introduces the fundamentals of financial accounting to graduate students. Throughout the course, communication skills will be emphasized. After completing the course, a student is expected to understand how accounting information is produced, interpret and analyze financial statements, communicate firms’ financial health and appreciate ethical issues in accounting. Since the course content will be approached from the perspective of a user, rather than a producer, of financial accounting information, a student’s analytical ability is emphasized.
Overview of Course Content: Accounting is the language of business and therefore a solid understanding of accounting is imperative to quality business education. Accounting produces economic information about a business that aids decision-makers to make decisions. Depending on the classes of decision-makers, we can roughly divide accounting into financial accounting and management accounting. Financial accounting produces financial statements that primarily serve external decision-makers, such as investors, financial analysts, creditors and government agencies.
Management accounting, on the other hand, generates information primarily used by internal decision-makers, such as managers. This course concentrates on financial accounting. Financial accounting measures the economic consequences of a business’s activities and aggregates these measurements in the form of accounting reports or financial statements. The information in the financial statements serves external decision-makers in different ways.
The Term Paper on Accounting Software Decisions
Selecting Accounting Software is one of the most important and, potentially, one of the most costly decisions a business makes. The decision is important because if the right choice is made, internal control of most accounting functions will provide a lower risk of doing business. An accurate method of keeping track of the essential financial functions of the business also will result. However, ...
For example, financial analysts and investors use accounting information to value the firm; creditors base debt contracts on accounting information; accounting measures of performance often determine managers’ compensation contracts. No matter how financial accounting information is used, it is clear that a thorough understanding of the accounting information produced by a business is key to making sound business decision. 1 Text: 1. Financial Accounting: An Introduction to Concepts, Methods and Uses, Stickney, Weil, Schipper and Francis, 13th edition, South-Western, 2009. 2. (Class notes) Class notes will be posted in the public folder.
Grading: Your course grade will be determined as follows: Midterm Exam Final Exam Quiz or Case Analysis Attendance and Participation Assignments Total 30% 30% 20% 10% 10% 100% There are no make-up exams unless you miss them for legitimate reasons, such as medical emergencies (need to provide written poof).
The midterm and the final will be in class and will be closed-book. The exams will be composed of problem solving and short essay questions. Exams are cumulative. There will be around 2 quizzes and 2 case analyses each worth 5%. Also, there will also be roughly 10-12 homework problem sets or short essays due at the beginning of each class.
Your homework is graded based on effort (on completeness, not on correctness).
Class attendance and participation is crucial for the success of this course. You are expected to attend all class sessions and be prepared for class discussion. If you are to miss a class, please notify me in advance. Should you have legitimate reasons for missing a class, please provide me with related documents prior to missing the class, so as not to be fully penalized for the attendance and participation grade. Structure of the Course: In this course we will take the perspective of financial statement users rather than that of preparers.
Accordingly, we will emphasize on interpreting and analyzing financial information. All exams will reflect this perspective. However, our emphasis does not suggest that accounting techniques are unimportant. After all, it is impossible for someone to analyze financial information without thorough understanding of how such information is prepared. We choose the former perspective mainly for the purpose of presenting and testing. You are expected to read the assigned handouts (or chapters) before you come to class. If you have never taken an accounting course and you don’t prepare yourself, the class time can be very long. Good luck! 2
The Essay on Accounting: Final Exam
For each of the following course objectives, explain in 200-400 words what you learned in this course and how you could apply your learning of this course objective to your personal life or career. Refer to the syllabus to assist you in understanding what material was covered under each objective. 4pts each 1) CHANGING DYNAMICS OF ACCOUNTING The steps of accounting cycles are revenues, ...
