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 other MOOCs of the series.
If you are a POLIMI student you have to log in using your Person Code. This is the only way to prove your participation in this course for official recognition.
Course 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.
At the end of this course a new edition will be activated.
The course materials will still be available to all registered users for a long time, even after the closing of the edition.
You can access the course absolutely free of charge and completely online.
Prerequisites
No prerequisite knowledge is required. It is particularly recommended for students with little background in financial and managerial accounting.
Discussion forum
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.
Quizzes and scores
The course is organized into different weeks and modules. At the end of each module, you will find a self-evaluation quiz ("Practice Quiz") specifically created to help you check the status of your learning progress and your re-elaboration abilities of an acquired knowledge. At the end of the course you will also find a Final Quiz to test your knowledge.
Certificate of Accomplishment
The Certificate of Accomplishment will be released to anyone who successfully completed the course by answering correctly to at least 60% of the questions. You will be able
to download the Certificate of Accomplishment directly on the website.
Once you have successfully passed the course, you can request the Certificate of Accomplishment without waiting for the end of the edition.
The Certificate of Accomplishment does not confer any academic credit, grade or degree.
FAQ
For further information, see FAQ page.
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.
