Fundamentals of financial and management accounting
Fundamentals of financial and management accounting
Learn how to read and analyze financial statements and understand basic techniques to manage costs and capital investment decisions.
Introduction to Management Engineering Series
This MOOC is part of the Introduction to Management Engineering series, which is designed to introduce prospect master students and people interested in managerial disciplines into the key fundamentals of Management Engineering. Through an analytical and engineering approach, the series provides basic concepts and language in the areas of Strategy, Economics, Financial Accounting, Organization, and Operations Management.
The series is the result of a collaborative design between METID, the service of Politecnico di Milano devoted to e-learning and e-collaboration, and the Study Course in Management Engineering.
See the full seriesCourse description
This is an introductory course on financial and management accounting. How many times have you heard of net profit, operating profit, operating margin, cash, earning and so on? But are they referring to the same concepts or are they different things?
The first part of this course will introduce the basic accounting principles and accounting terminology to understand how a company keeps control of financial events and provides information on how it is performing. These basic concepts will support the analysis of financial reports companies prepare. We will go through balance sheet, income statement, financial statement, learning how to read and analyze them.
The course will also provide the basis of management accounting introducing some techniques (e.g. break- even analysis or NPV) to support managers in making short-term and long-term decisions, such as "Is it convenient to dispose a production machine and buy a new one?" or "How many products should the company sell in order to break-even?"
The course will bring examples and case studies that will help students better understand the practical applications of the basic accounting principles and techniques. At the end of the course, students will be able to read, understand and analyze financial documents and to apply simple techniques to analyse costs and evaluate capital investment decisions.
Intended Learning Outcomes
Prerequisites
No prerequisite knowledge is required. It is particularly recommended for students with little background in financial and managerial accounting.
Activities
A Forum section is available. The Forum is designed to allow students to exchange opinions and discuss open questions. The instructors participate in the Forum as well, as Administrators, and oversee the developing of the threads.
Assessment
Your final grade for the course will be based on the results of your answers to the graded quizzes. You have an unlimited number of attempts at each quiz, but you must wait 24 hours before you can try again. You will have successfully completed the course if you achieve 60% (or more) of the total score in each quiz. The maximum score possible for each quiz is given at the beginning of the quiz. You can view your score in the quiz on your last attempt or on the 'Grades' page.Certificate of accomplishment
You must be registered in POK through Politecnico di Milano personal account to obtain the Certificate of Accomplishment. It will be released to anyone who successfully completed the course by achieving at least 60% of the total score in each one of the graded quizzes and filling the final survey.
You will be able to download the Certificate of Accomplishment directly from Politecnico di Milano web services.
The Certificate of Accomplishment does not confer any academic credit, grade or degree.
Information about fees and access to materials
You can access the course absolutely free of charge and completely online.
Course faculty
Deborah Agostino
Deborah Agostino is lecturer in Management and Organizations at Politecnico di Milano (B.Sc in Computing Systems Engineering). She is also lecturer in Management Accounting and Control at MIP (the Business School of Politecnico di Milano) where she teaches in international MBA courses. She received a B.Sc. in Management Engineering from Politecnico di Milano in 2006, a Master and PhD in Management Engineering in the same university respectively in 2008 and 2012. In 2011, she was visiting scholar at the Edinburgh business school, developing skills on accounting in the private and the public sphere. She researches management accounting (i.e. performance management) in organizational networks. This topic has been largely investigated during the three years of the Ph.D cycle, with a specific focus on the organizational network for the provision of the local public transport. Recently, she has developed a new field of research on accounting in the social media era. This area addresses the usage of social technologies by local administrations to engage with citizens, with a specific attention to the measurement issue and the impact of social media on the management control cycle.
Marco Giorgino
Full Professor of Financial Markets and Institutions.
Contact details
If you have any enquiries about the course or if you need technical assistance please contact pok@polimi.it. For further information, see FAQ page.