Financial Accounting online courses

Financial Accounting free lessons
Course Description:
Our goal is to help you develop a framework for understanding financial, managerial, and tax reports. The course goal is divided into five subordinate challenges that can help you organize the way you learn accounting:
- The record keeping and reporting challenge
- The computation challenge
- The judgment challenge
- The usage challenge
- The search challenge
The course adopts a decision-maker perspective of accounting by emphasizing the relation between accounting data and the underlying economic events generating them.
Lecture Notes :
1 Overview and Introduction - Setting the Stage and the Course Framework (PDF)
Objectives:1. Build a working relationship: What are our responsibilities?2. Answer the following: What do accountants do and why is it important?3. Understand the course objective and challenges, and our strategy to meet them.4. Begin to gain an understanding of the course framework.5. Understand how individual events affect financial statements.
2 Principles of Accrual Accounting (PDF)
Objectives: 1. Understand how accrual accounting differs from a cash basis.2. Develop a mental model for classifying types of accounting accruals.3. Understand how accruals affect the financial statement.4. Become familiar with the basic bookkeeping model that illustrates how record keeping impacts the financials.5. Understand the accounting cycle:a. recording events during the accounting period,b. end-of-period adjustments,c. closing entries,d. financial statement preparation.
3 Elements of an Annual Report and Financial Ratios (PDF)
Objectives:1. Become familiar with the main parts of an annual report:a. CEO's letter,b. description of business activity,c. management discussion and analysis,d. audit report,e. financial statements,f. description of accounting procedures,g. footnotes.2. Understand the purposes of the four financial statements:a. balance sheet,b. income statement,c. statement of cash flows, andd. statement of owners' equity.3. Become familiar with the types of economic activity that are associated with common financial-statement line items, and thus the reasons why users of financial reports might find these items useful.4. Understand the distinction between recognition and disclosure of information.5. Begin to understand commonly-used financial ratios.
4 Revenue Recognition and Accounts Receivable (PDF)
Objectives:1. Discuss the criteria for revenue recognition under accrual accounting: a firm recognizes revenue when it is deemed to bea. earned andb. collectible.2. Introduce the different types of contra-asset accounts related to Accounts Receivable: Allowance for Doubtful Accounts ("ADA"), Allowance for Returns, and Deferred Income Liability.3. Understand the three alternative methods used to calculate the Allowance for Doubtful Accounts: direct method, percentage of sales, and aging.4. Work on a detailed example: reverse engineering Intel's cash collections in 2001.
5 Revenue Recognition
Objectives:1. Reinforce and extend your understanding of revenue recognition.2. Illustrate how accounting numbers can influence the operating decisions they reflect.
6 Accounting for Inventory and COGS (PDF)
Objectives:1. Understand three decisions related to accounting for inventory:a. Product Costing (managerial accounting).b. Cost-flows from inventory to Cost of Goods Sold.c. Valuation adjustments (after midterms).2. Begin to understand these related issues:a. Alternative accounting rules (focus on LIFO and FIFO).b. Reporting consequences.c. Terms and concepts.d. Computations.e. Tax effects.
7 The Matching Principle and Long-lived Assets (PDF)
Concepts and Objectives:1. Understand more applications of the matching principle:a. Allocating historical costs to future revenues.b. Accruing expenses related to outstanding obligations.2. Understand the concept of "Depreciation" and the assumptions used to calculate depreciation.3. Continue to learn how to reverse engineer related accounting entries from financial statement information.4. Begin to understand and appreciate the Statement of Cash Flows.
8 Matching Principle: Property, Plant, and Equipment
Objectives:1. Reinforce and extend your understanding of accounting for property, plant, and equipment.2. Better appreciate how the usage and judgment challenges are contextual, depending especially on the business, the individuals making decisions, and the regulatory environment.Game Plan and Class Pedagogy:Case discussion.
9 The Statement of Cash Flow (PDF)
Objectives:1. Understand the purpose of the SCF.2. Distinguish between the three sections of the SCF.3. Understand the differences between the direct and the indirect SCF.4. Understand how to derive the indirect SCF from the Income Statement and the Balance Sheet.Note on Cash Flow Statements, with examples (PDF).XYZ Company: An Exercise for Preparing the Statement of Cash Flows using the Direct and Indirect Methods (PDF).
10 Accounting for Taxes (PDF)
Objectives:1. Understand the differences between tax accounting and financial accounting:a. Timing: temporary differences.b. Scope: permanent differences.2. Understand the effects of events on income taxesa. Net operating losses.b. Valuation allowances.c. Changes in tax rates.3. Explore the concepts of "Deferred Tax Liability" and "Deferred Tax Asset."4. Interpret income tax disclosures.Example to Illustrate Net Operating Tax-Loss Carry forwards, Changes in Future Tax Rates, and the Valuation Allowance (PDF).
11 Marketable Securities and Valuation Adjustments (PDF)
Objectives:1. Understand when accounting departs from the "transactions-based" model and towards market-driven valuations.2. Illustrate the role of judgment in applying the LCM rule for inventory.3. Understand how marketable securities are valued on companies' Balance Sheets.4. Understand the Income Statement effects of valuation adjustments.
12 Current Liabilities and Contingencies and an Introduction to Long-Term Debt (PDF)
Objectives:1. Understand the nature and reporting requirement of short-term liabilities.2. Illustrate the trade-off between reliability and relevance of accounting numbers in the accounting for contingencies.3. Understand the time value of money and the mechanics of present value calculations.
13 Long-Term Debt (PDF)
Objectives:1. Understand the terminology of long-term debt including par value, stated versus effective interest rate, discounts, premiums, and mortgages.2. Understand how long-term debt affects the financial statements over time.
14 Debt and Valuation
Objectives:1. Understand the role of judgment in determining valuation allowances.2. Understand important factors that can influence this judgment.3. Understand how various parties influence the reported numbers -- the pressure they put on the reported numbers.4. Reinforce your understanding of record keeping and reporting and search issues related to valuation allowances.5. Introduce banking terms and concepts.
15 Leases (PDF)
Objectives:1. Understand the rationale for leasing, and the distinction between operating and capital leases.2. Understand the Income Statement and Balance Sheet differences between operating and capital leases. (Note: we will focus on accounting from the lessee's perspective, not the lessor.)Game Plan and Class Pedagogy:Lecture and directed discussion.
16 Stockholders' Equity (PDF)
Objectives:1. Understand the components of stockholders' equity.2. Understand the effects various transactions have on stockholders' equity.3. Better understand ratios based on stockholders' equity.4. Begin to understand the accounting for stock options.
17 Acquisitions (PDF)
Objectives:1. Understand that the accounting method used for acquisitions depends on the extent to which the investor exerts influence over the investee.2. Understand the effects of dividends received and investee income on the financial statements of the investor under the equity method.3. Understand the effects of consolidated accounting on the balance sheet and income statement of the investor:a. Does an acquisition effect shareholders' equity?b. What do minority interests on the income statement and balance sheet represent?c. How is goodwill computed?
18 Current Issues in Financial Reporting
Objectives:1. Better understand issues associated with consolidated financial reporting.2. Address recent accounting issues raised in the popular and financial press.3. Give you time to learn deferred taxes, marketable security accounting, leases, etc.
19 Introduction to FSA
Objective:1. Synthesize your knowledge of financial reporting through a comprehensive case analysis.
20 Course Review and Wrap-up
Objective:1. To review the course framework and course material and preview related courses.