Financial Accounting

How do investors, creditors, and other users analyze financial statements to assess corporate performance? Learn financial accounting, how to read financial statements, and how to gather inputs to valuation models.

Financial Accounting

How do investors, creditors, and other users analyze financial statements to assess corporate performance? Learn financial accounting, how to read financial statements, and how to gather inputs to valuation models.

Accounting is the language of business. It is difficult to understand business without knowing some accounting. Knowing accounting will help learners better understand and contribute to their own companies and better understand business around them.

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This course is part of the MicroMasters® Program in Finance and provides a rigorous introduction to the principles of financial accounting. We focus on the preparation and analysis of financial statements, and on why financial statements take the form they do. We cover the basic structure of financial reports and the process of recording transactions. We will also learn how investors, creditors, and other users analyze financial statements to assess corporate performance. The course focuses on using the financial statements to gather inputs to valuation models and for corporate finance decisions.

This course offers general managers, financial analysts, financial advisors, quantitative researchers, asset managers, risk managers, quantitative developers working in financial services, and professionals servicing the financial industry the tools to succeed. Undergraduate and graduate students looking to enter business in general or finance in particular would also benefit greatly from this valuable course.

What you'll learn

  • Understand accounting terms
  • Understand how financial statements are constructed
  • Ability to read financial statements
  • Gather inputs to valuation models and for corporate finance decisions

Prerequisites

Basic math

Meet your instructors

  • Featured image for John E. Core
    Nanyang Technological University Professor and a Professor of Accounting, Sloan School of Management

Who can take this course?

Because of U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) restrictions and other U.S. federal regulations, learners residing in one or more of the following countries or regions will not be able to register for this course: Iran, Cuba, North Korea and the Crimea, Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic regions of Ukraine.