Financial Statements Unlocked: How to Understand Corporate Finance and Financial Management

Every company maintains financial records that help you to understand how well it’s doing. How can you make sense of this information and use it to the strategic advantage of your business?

On this course, you’ll have the chance to find out everything you need to know about reading and making sense of financial statements.

You’ll have the opportunity to explore a range of financial statements – focusing on income statements, statements of financial position and cash flow statements. You’ll look at their qualitative characteristics and learn about the relevance and reliability of financial statements.

You’ll also get to know who else in the business uses this accounting information by investigating the different branches of accounting.

Learn how to prepare cash flow statements

This course will introduce you to the importance of the cash flow statement – one of the three key financial statements that report the cash generated and spent during a specific period of time.

You’ll look at how these statements break down into three sections: operating, investment and financing activities.

Discover the statement of financial position

A statement of financial position, or balance sheet, will reveal if a company is thriving – and if it’s worth investing in.

You’ll get to grips with the key terms of a balance sheet, learn the importance of balancing the books and carry out exercises to increase your knowledge of, and familiarity with, these statements.

This course is designed for anyone looking to build their financial data analysis and interested in using data for business decision making.

It will be of particular interest to people in senior management and leadership roles who lack an accounting background, especially if you wish to learn the skills to help you make better decisions and advance your career.

You can enhance your learning experience by following related courses, designed by Coventry University:

• How to Master Financial Statements: Financial Ratio Analysis and Interpretation
• Break-Even Analysis Unlocked: How to Understand the Profit and Loss Statement
• How to Make Better Capital Investment Decisions and Recognise Investment Opportunities
• Divisional Performance Measurement: How to Achieve Operational Excellence

• The purpose of accounting and financial statements
• Getting started
• Introduction to accounting
• Financial statements
• Income statement
• Weekly wrap
• The statement of financial position and the cash flow statement
• Welcome to Week 2
• Statement of financial position
• Cash flow statement
• Bringing them all together
• Closing thoughts