This introductory course is aimed at helping you understand the fundamentals of accounting well, so that you establish a firm foundation to pursue further in your accounting studies and career.
A person new to business and accounting often has to struggle to understand basic business and accounting concepts. You may have even heard that accounting is only about number-crunching based on a cookbook of rules. Let me assure you that accounting deals a lot with people, involves creativity and judgment, and is more than just book-keeping. Thanks to the computer evolution; gone are the days when much manual work is spent on writing the books.

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Lecturer: Ms Wong Soo Leong

Mrs Wong Soo Leong holds a Bachelor of Accountancy from the National University of Singapore and is also a fellow of the ACCA. She has more than 25 years of experience in the audit area. She spent many years in one of the large four as an auditing manager before moving to be the Group Auditing Director of a large public company in Singapore prior to her retirement. She is now a freelance accounting consultant and lecturer in Australia.

This module consists of ten chapters, each introducing you to the different aspects of accounting.

Chapter 1
Accounting information for decision-making   (Duration: about 2.25 hours)
You will learn how businesses are set up and what they do before going further to see how accounting plays its role in business decision-making for a wide group of users. You will also have good overviews of the accounting process, functional areas of accounting and the financial statement reporting regulations at the national and  international levels.

Chapter 2
Accounting assumptions and principles (Duration: about 2.2 hours)
We finished Session 1 with the briefing that the accounting profession follows a hierarchy of policies, accounting standards and principles for its application in preparing and presenting accounting information to external users. For this session, we shall look into the basic underlying accounting assumptions and principles which are followed by accountants for the preparation and presentation of financial statements.

Chapter 3
Basic financial statements (Duration: about 2 hours)
Primarily, financial statements present in dollar terms the story of enterprises. You will study the basic financial statements which in essence attempt to answer questions such as the followings. Where have we obtained our funds and what assets have we acquired with those funds? How much money did we make? Why has net worth increased or reduced over the period? How much cash have we and where has it gone?

Chapter 4
The accounting process (Duration: about 2.5 hours)
In the previous session, we learnt the basic financial statements. At the end of this session, you will understand the accounting process which accountants use to identify and record transactions, as well as prepare financial statements of a business entity.

Chapter 5
Accounting for retailing (Duration: about 2 hours)
During this session, we shall walk through a worked example on the accounting process, commencing from collection of data on economic transactions and ending with preparation of financial statements for a retailing business. We will also look at how this accounting process is handled under a manual system as well as a computerized one.

Chapter 6
Accounting for inventories (Duration: about 2 hours)
In the previous session, you were introduced to a retailing business where the primary area of business is the sale of products. During this session, you will learn how to determine the values of inventories on the Balance Sheet and the Profit and Loss Statement.

Chapter 7
Accounting for cash, debtors and creditors (Duration: about 2.25 hours)
During this session, we shall study accounting on 3 key areas: cash, debtors and creditors arising through trading. Cash: You will learn controls to safeguard cash, how to do bank reconciliation, and how to maintain petty cash records.  Debtors and creditors: You will look into procedures to recognize bad debts arising from trade debtors; and the accounting on subsidiary and control accounts for trade debtors and creditors.

Chapter 8
Accounting for fixed assets and depreciation (Duration: about 2.25 hours)
During this session, you will learn an important Balance Sheet item which is the fixed assets  used in the operations of the business. You will also study depreciation accounting which is concerned with the allocation of fixed asset costs over future accounting periods.

Chapter 9
Analysis and interpretation of financial statements (Duration: about 2.25 hours)
During this session, you will learn a systematic approach for the whole analysis and interpretation process using ratios and other financial devices. You will also learn the inter-relationship of the different ratios and financial devices in a systematic way, so that you can use them meaningfully.

Chapter 10
Ratio analysis (Duration: about 3 hours)
During this session, we will cover the different types of ratios used for analysis of financial statements ranging from smaller businesses to listed companies. A worked example will be given to let you understand how the computations are done.

You may study this module as follows.

Go to the Archived Lectures link to attend the lecture of each of the chapters. Should you want to go through the material on your own, instead of attending the lectures, you may go to learning packages to do your self-study. Of course, you are most welcome to do both.

After each chapter, you may go to the Test (Short Answers) link to do a short evaluation test of your understanding of the chapter that you had just studied.

Terms and Conditions:
For the subscription price stated below, you will have unlimited access to all the lessons in this module, during the access period (as stated below).

Refund: For refund request after purchase, please refer to our Refund Policy listed on our home page.

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