22800 Understanding Accounting and Financial Reports

Description

This subject prepares students to be able to read and analyse accounting reports enabling the evaluation of historical business operations as well as facilitating the planning of a future business activity. Accounting information provides information for decision support to a diverse range of stakeholders, both inside the organisation (being management and board) and external (comprising shareholders, finance providers, government, customers, unions etc).

An understanding of accounting and the many information products generated by the accounting system is a fundamental requirement for business professionals as:

• Accounting is the language of business and provides the financial measurement processes used in all forms of business, including for-profit, government and the not-for-profit sector.
• Accounting processes are governed by a formal set of rules and regulations in the form of standards as well as legislative pronouncements that underpin the preparation and presentation of financial reports.
• Knowledge of accounting enables the extraction and analysis of the information content of financial reports and provides the tools for the measurement and analysis of the operating, investing and financing activities of the business
• Accounting information provides the foundation for analytical tools used to predict the future via the preparation of forecasts and budgets of future business activity.