BUS113-B Accounting with Sustainable Financial Reporting

Businesses must prepare annual accounts, which give everyone who wants insight into how the business has developed. This online course provides knowledge about how to create annual accounts and how to use them.

The accounts must be set up in a specific way. The legislation in this area is extensive, and it regulates the entire production process: From the bookkeeping of the transactions, carried out by the company, to the information provided in the publicly available annual report.

The first part of the course is devoted to techniques and methods used for a company to register all transactions it makes during a year. At the end of the financial year the company must show the assets and liabilities it has and the profits. The second part of the course is devoted to this process, and this part deals with what the accounts should contain of information and the rules used when assets and liabilities are valued and the result measured.

Accounts are publicly available, and the most important information about each company is just a keystroke away since the key figures are freely available on the internet. The third part of the course deals with how to use the accounts for analysis, valuation and credit assessment.

In this course, the students learn about the requirements for sustainability reporting; from the Norwegian authorities and from the EU's taxonomy.The students learn how to report within the various requirements, and how to calculate key figures.

After completing the course, the student will have the following learning outcomes, divided into knowledge, skills, and general competence:

Knowledge

The student:

• can record common transactions and incorporate frequently occurring year-end adjustments in accordance with the principles of double-entry bookkeeping, as well as prepare the final income statement and balance sheet
• can explain the main accounting rules for the measurement of assets and liabilities
• can calculate key figures for sustainability reporting
• can conduct appropriate reporting of sustainability data in accordance with current legislation and EU directives

Skills

The student:

• can value assets and liabilities and allocate income and expenses according to the main rules of the Accounting Act
• can prepare a simple cash flow statement
• can analyze and comment on a company's financial development over time and relative to other companies

General competence

The student:

• can read an annual report with a critical eye and reflect on the opportunities accountants have to provide good and relevant or poor and misleading information to users of financial statements