Financial Accounting and Financial Statement Analysis

Introduction

All limited companies and many other enterprises must annually prepare financial statements, which give all interested parties an insight into how the economic situation has developed. In this course students learn how financial statements are prepared and how they can be used.

Financial statements must be organized in a specific manner. The legislation for this area is extensive and regulates the entire production process: from bookkeeping of the enterprise's transactions to the type of information that has to be disclosed in the publicly available annual report.

The first part of the course gives an overview of financial statements and the role accounting information plays in the economy. The second part covers techniques and methods used for an enterprise to record all its transactions in the course of a year. It is not sufficient to consecutively book the transactions that take place. The financial statements must be set up at the end of the fiscal year, which means that the enterprises must value their assets and debts and calculate how much that has been lost or gained. The third part covers this process and addresses what the financial statements shall include of information and the Norwegian rules that govern valuation of assets and liabilities and recognition of revenues and expenses.

Financial statements are publicly available and vital information on every Norwegian company can be accessed by just pressing a key, since the main figures are freely available on the Internet. The fourth part of the course covers how financial statements can be used.

Course content

• The purpose, content and function of financial statements
• Users of financial statements
• The regulation surrounding financial statements
• What are accounts and accounting?
• Transactions and the balance sheet equation
• Transactions and the accounting system (the principle of double-entry bookkeeping)
• Closing of accounts: from the list of ledger balances to the income statement and the balance sheet
• Fundamental accounting principles
• Measurement of assets and debts
• The cash flow statement
• The accounts as a source of information
• Time series analyses and cross section analyses of profitability, cash flow, solidity and financing.