× Explore our resources to learn how to reach your career goals with a graduate business degree.

Create an account

Create your free mba.com Insider account to access exclusive content, application resources, planning guides, free Official GMAT™ prep, and more!

Become an mba.com Insider

Accounting Fundamentals

Learn how to analyze financial statements and build your knowledge of accounting theory, processes, and practice to ensure you start business school with the confidence to be successful.

 

Buy Now

Image

Accounting Fundamentals

  • Become acquainted with balance sheets and cashflow statements
  • Understand the framework for describing and assessing a business’ finances
  • Learn to differentiate assets, liabilities, and equity
  • Build knowledge of accounting theory, processes, and practices
Purchase Course

What's Included:

  • Topic-specific courses to reinforce the content you need
  • On-demand classes taught by experts
  • Course content approved by business school professors
  • Lessons based on real-world business scenarios
  • Quizzes and assessments that test subject mastery
  • 24/7 accessibility on mobile and desktop

Bundle and Save

Cover all the key topics in Finance, Accounting, and Statistics. With the Business Fundamentals bundle, you get access to all three courses for the price of two.

Purchase Bundle

You Will Learn To:

  1. Identify the four financial statements’ purpose and know how decision-makers use financial statements.
  2. List accounting standards and principles’ role in providing relevant and useful financial information.
  3. Analyze the effect of Accounting transactions on financial statements using the accounting equation.
  4. Apply revenue and expense recognition Accounting principles to explain the difference between cash and accrual accounting.
  5. Apply debit and credit conventions to record accounting transactions.
  6. Prepare financial statements by employing the accounting process of journal entries, T-accounts, and trial balances.
  7. Identify the content, structure, and interrelationships of financial statements.
     

Accounting Fundamentals Course Topics

We begin our exploration of Accounting by covering the basics.  Students will learn how we define Accounting, how it informs key business decisions, and what the financial statements used by accountants are.  We also include some optional coverage of who the standards setters of Accounting in the US are and what the ultimate objective of financial reporting is.

Our second topic focuses on transaction analysis, or an analysis of the business activities that impact financial statements.  After demonstrating how to perform a transaction analysis and use it to prepare financial statements, we discuss the differences between accrual and cash-based Accounting in a transaction analysis context. 

Topic 3 is all about the Accounting process and its cyclical nature.  From the first step where you're analyzing a transaction analysis to the last where you're closing out accounts, we'll discuss the entire process and give you the opportunity to perform some of those steps yourself.

The final topic is a deep dive into the statement of cash flows, one of the four major financial statements. We cover what makes the statement of cash flows so important, how it relates to the other financial statements, and some of the different ways that information may be presented. The topic concludes with an opportunity for students to prepare a balance sheet themselves.