GRA 8222 Financial Accounting
GRA 8222 Financial Accounting
The set of financial accounts is the primary channel through which an organisation communicates its financial performance, position, and cash flows to internal and external stakeholders. A thorough and critical understanding of financial accounting information is therefore essential for senior managers who are expected to interpret, discuss, and challenge assessments of a company’s financial state of affairs.
This course provides students with a solid foundation in the principles and structure of financial accounting, including the logic underlying the income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement. Emphasis is placed not only on accounting mechanics, but on how accounting information is produced, what it represents, and where its limitations lie.
Building on these fundamentals, students will develop the ability to analyse and interpret financial statements to assess profitability, liquidity, solvency, and risk. Financial accounting information is treated as the natural starting point for most financial analyses and value-based decisions, and as a key input into managerial decision-making, performance evaluation, and communication with investors and other stakeholders.
By the end of the course, students will be able to read and analyse financial accounts with confidence, use accounting information as a basis for evaluating business performance and value creation, and engage effectively in strategic and financial discussions at senior management level.
Upon completion, the student will be able to:
- Explain the fundamental principles of financial accounting.
- Define and apply key financial accounting vocabulary.
- Describe the mechanics of developing external corporate accounts.
- Identify the limitations of financial accounting information for corporate control and decision-making.
Upon completion, the student will be able to:
- Perform specific transactions in financial accounts.
- Conduct year-end adjustments and prepare a complete set of year-end accounts.
- Apply different types of adjustments to financial accounts to prepare for analysis.
- Analyze financial accounting information for corporate control and decision-making purposes.
- Communicate the results of financial analysis effectively.
Upon completion, the student will be able to:
- Critically reflect on the quality and reliability of financial accounting information for various uses.
- Evaluate the general quality of a set of financial accounts, considering their limitations and relevance in preventing or revealing financial misconduct.
Topic 1
- The main principles of financial accounting
- Posting financial accounting transactions
- Completing year-end accounts
Topic 2
- Regrouping and adjusting the financial accounts in preparation for analysis
Topic 3
- Using financial accounting information for corporate control purposes
- Earnings related issues
- Capital structure issues
- Liquidity issues
- Other performance measures
Topic 4
- Using financial accounting information for corporate decision making
- Strategic decision making
- Investment decisions
- Mergers and acquisitions
- Valuation
- Operational decision making
- Budgeting
- Pricing decisions
1 ECTS credit corresponds to a workload of 26-30 hours.
The course is conducted through a total of 24 hours of lectures and casework.
Attendance at all sessions in the course is compulsory. If you have to miss part(s) of the course you must ask in advance for leave of absence. More than 25% absence in a course will require retaking the entire course. It's the student's own responsibility to obtain any information provided in class that is not included on the course homepage/ It's learning or other course materials.
In this course students are encouraged to use AI critically. On the exam, students must attach the entire chat history, as well as highlight certain parts of the course paper where they are critical of the answers from the LLM models.
The course is a part of a full Executive MBA programme and examination in all courses must be passed in order to obtain a certificate.
In all BI Executive courses and programmes, there is a mutual requirement for the student and the course responsible regarding the involvement of the student's experience in the planning and implementation of courses, modules and programmes. This means that the student has the right and duty to get involved with their own knowledge and practice relevance, through the active sharing of their relevant experience and knowledge.
Granted admission to the EMBA programme. Please consult our student regulations.
Disclaimer
Changes in exam type can be made until the course starts. In addition, unforeseen events or external conditions may call for deviations in teaching and exams.
| Assessments |
|---|
Exam category: Submission Form of assessment: Submission PDF Exam/hand-in semester: First Semester Weight: 100 Grouping: Individual Duration: 4 Week(s) Exam code: GRA 82221 Grading scale: ECTS Resit: Examination when next scheduled course |
| Activity | Duration | Comment |
|---|---|---|
Teaching | 24 Hour(s) | |
Prepare for teaching | 20 Hour(s) | |
Student's own work with learning resources | 36 Hour(s) | Self study, feedback activities/counselling and exam. |
A course of 1 ECTS credit corresponds to a workload of 26-30 hours. Therefore a course of 3 ECTS credit corresponds to a workload of at least 80 hours.
Students can use AI but must attach the entire chat history, as well as highlight certain parts of the written assignment where they are critical of the answers from the LLM models.