← Back to the Financial Accounting outline The Course Maker
← Financial Accounting outline
Week 1 · Module overview

Week 1 — Accounting and the Business Environment

Financial Accounting Free sample edition

Why this matters

A food truck owner checking whether a month made money and a lender at a community bank deciding on a loan both rely on numbers someone else kept. This week asks who reads those numbers and who writes the rules they follow.

In plain language

This week is about what accounting is for and who it is for. Accounting is the way a business keeps track of what happens to it and tells people about it. Some of those people run the business, and some stand outside it, such as a bank or an investor. You will meet the three common ways to set up a business, the groups that write the rules for business reports, and the ethics that make those reports worth trusting. You will also meet the running case — a made-up bicycle shop the course follows all term.

  • This week: what accounting is, its users, the three forms of business, the entity rule, GAAP and who sets it, IFRS, the AICPA's six principles, the four statements, and the bicycle shop.
  • How they connect: this is the foundation; every later week records events for these readers, under these rules.
  • Where we're going next: Week 2, The Accounting Equation and Transaction Analysis.

Focus

Who reads a business's numbers, and who writes the rules those numbers follow?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

  • [ ] tell financial accounting from managerial accounting
  • [ ] sort a business's readers into internal and external users
  • [ ] name the three forms and keep owner spending out
  • [ ] say what the FASB and the SEC each do

To-do

Plan your week

  1. Read Chapter 1 (~40–50 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
  2. Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes).
  3. Work the practice set (15–25 minutes).
  4. Do the Accounting Workshop (about 90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment.
  5. Take the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: name three outside readers of the bicycle shop and the question each asks.

You've got this

Take it in order, and ask your instructor if a step snags.

Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com