NCCW 5000 - Financial Accounting

Fall. 2.5 credits. Letter grades only (no audit).

Enrollment limited to: MS in Healthcare Leadership/Executive MBA dual degree students. Offered in New York City at Cornell Tech.

D. Szpiro.

Knowledge of accounting is a core requirement to any career that is business related. The accounting system provides much of the data needed to make business decisions. The aim of this course is to help you build a strong base of this essential building block at the outset of your business education. This course is designed to provide you with a comprehensive, graduate level introduction to accounting. You will learn how the accounting system used by firms stores information. This information is used to measure and report their economic performance to external constituents such as stockholders, debt holders and potential investors. You will build a solid foundation of accounting concepts and mechanics, and develop a perspective for the intelligent use of this information. By the end of the course you should be able to read and interpret financial accounting reports and draw conclusions about a firm’s performance. The course is organized into two interrelated modules. First, you will learn the process of accounting ‐ how the information is recorded, organized and collated to produce reports. You will learn to create the reports. This includes an examination of the main financial statements, the nature of accrual measurement, revenue recognition, assets, liabilities and equity. The first half of the course is the foundation. In the second part of the course, you will systematically review important parts of the financial statements that are issued by companies. You will learn to analyze the information and make inferences about firm quality, performance and risk.