Financial Accounting

Financial accounting refers to translating a firm’s economic activity into highly structured information about financial performance and condition. This information is highly structured because all firms apply the same GAAP standards to produce the information, yielding financial data that are comparable across firms and across time. This class focuses on how we can use financial information to gain insights into firms’ financial performance and condition. This course seeks to teach you how to understand and communicate firm performance to outside stakeholders (e.g., current and prospective capital providers, business partners, employees, etc.) for your role as a future business leader.

Student Learning Objectives

By the end of this course you will be able to:

Assess a firm’s financial performance and condition
Discuss and understand the role of accounting in providing information for financial managers, investors, equity analysts, and creditors
Apply the fundamental accounting concepts and principles to concrete business problems
Analyze, synthesize, and evaluate accounting information in the context of concrete business problems
Become proficient in using financial statements and footnote disclosures to understand and evaluate corporate activities
Discuss the elements of financial statements and the implications of management judgment and choice in accounting measurement
Describe how managers might employ opportunistic behavior (earnings management) to further their own gain, avoid unwanted attention, and report the firm in the best possible way

Explore the Financial Accounting Course

Take a look at what you can expect to learn in the financial accounting class. The course is taught by financial accounting experts. This video covers the details of how learning is structured and the expectations of students.

Click Here for Video Transcript

WEI TANG: Welcome to the MSF program Financial Accounting course. This is Professor Tang. I started my career at Georgetown University in 2005.

During the past 15 years, I’ve taught multiple core and elective courses for the MBA program and Undergraduate Program. And my research interests closely relate to the content of this course. They are mainly about how to use information from both corporate financial reporting and alternative data in decision-making.

I’ve also done some work related to digital economy. At the same time, I serve as a senior advisor to a local investment company. And I am delighted to apply my expertise in financial accounting in my advisory role as well.

So this course is an introduction to corporate financial reporting and has two integral parts. So in the first part, we will get some basic idea about what the four financial statements tell us about the company and also how the accounting process works. So the first part is more process-oriented.

In the second part, we will learn about how key accounts and financial statements are determined and how to interpret the financial statements. So the second part is more account-oriented and interpretation-oriented. I’m really looking forward to spending the next six weeks with the cohort.

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