Understanding Financial Statements (FutureLearn)

Offered by Coventry University,
Understanding Financial Statements (FutureLearn)

Learn how to make better business decisions with financial information. 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.

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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

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

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