Understanding Financial Statements
Learn how to make better business decisions with financial information.
Duration
2 weeksWeekly study
3 hours
Understanding Financial Statements
What is your financial statement trying to tell you?
Every business maintains financial records that help us to understand how well it’s doing. In this course, you’ll learn how to read them.
You’ll explore a range of financial statements - focusing on income statements, statements of financial position and cash flow statements. You’ll also investigate the different branches of accounting and learn to identify who else in the business uses this accounting information.
What do these statements contain? What do they reveal? Who makes use of them? This course will help you to answer these questions.
What topics will you cover?
- Introduction to accounting and its branches
- Identifying different users of accounting information and their requirements
- Overview of financial statements
- Introduction to income statement
- Introduction to statement of financial position
- Introduction to cash flow statement
Learning on this course
On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.
What will you achieve?
By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...
- Investigate the different branches of accounting
- Identify the main users of accounting information and their requirements
- Explain the purpose of financial statements (income statement, statement of financial position and cash flow statement)
- Explore items typically included in each of the financial statements and their meaning
- Interpret financial statements for decision-making purposes
Who is the course for?
This course would suit anyone looking for additional basic accounting skills. These are skills that can help you make better decisions and advance in your career. It may be of particular interest to people in senior management and leadership roles, who lack an accounting background.
Please note that the staff described in the ‘Who will you learn with?’ section below may be subject to change.
Who will you learn with?
Winfred is a lecturer in Accounting at Coventry University. He presently teaches on various accounting modules and his research interests are in ownership structure developments in emerging markets.
Who developed the course?
Coventry University
Coventry secured 5 QS Stars for Teaching and Online Learning in the QS World University Ranking 2020 and has received No. 1 in the world for Massive Open Online Courses in MoocLab’s World University Ranking 2021.
Established
1992Location
Coventry
Learning on FutureLearn
Your learning, your rules
- Courses are split into weeks, activities, and steps to help you keep track of your learning
- Learn through a mix of bite-sized videos, long- and short-form articles, audio, and practical activities
- Stay motivated by using the Progress page to keep track of your step completion and assessment scores
Join a global classroom
- Experience the power of social learning, and get inspired by an international network of learners
- Share ideas with your peers and course educators on every step of the course
- Join the conversation by reading, @ing, liking, bookmarking, and replying to comments from others
Map your progress
- As you work through the course, use notifications and the Progress page to guide your learning
- Whenever you’re ready, mark each step as complete, you’re in control
- Complete 90% of course steps and all of the assessments to earn your certificate
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Advance your career with a degree
Since 2017 you have been able to take a degree on FutureLearn. This free course is a bit like a starter course for a degree — it should give you a flavour of the degree subject but can also be your first step towards a degree qualification.
If you enjoy this course you can apply to join the program it’s part of to start working towards a degree on FutureLearn.
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