Accounting

In order to be able to use this information as well as make contributions to its creation in various situations the student needs to know the basic principles, models and methods that govern the structuring of a company’s accounting system. Accounting statements include various analyses for internal use in the company as well as the company’s financial report which is primarily used external stakeholders. 

This course shall provide knowledge and skills giving the graduate competences to be part of a firm’s accounting and economic functions, and can participate, at a qualified level, in central decisions involving economic information in other parts of the firm.

Central themes are: 

•Cost assessments for products and organizational units. 

•Planning and budgeting methods. 

•Budget follow-ups and performance evaluation related to managerial accounting.

•External stakeholders’ demand for and use of accounting information. 

•Principles and methods of recognizing and measuring a number of specific items related to the firm’s annual report. 

•Identify, describe and evaluate alternative accounting methods that might be used in specific situations in the annual reports, also involving considerations about relevance and reliability and management incentives. 

•List and describe relevant concepts and definitions. 

•Explain and relate concepts and definitions to specific economic decision problems. 

•Relate the purposes and basic concepts of managerial accounting to the methods and procedures used in an accounting system. 

Demonstrate skills, such that the student is able to: 

•Initiate and make simple registrations in a bookkeeping system including such systems used in a production company. 

•Use the bookkeeping system as a basis for the annual closing of the books and drawing up of an income statement and ending balance sheet. 

•Calculate and demonstrate how the income statement and ending balance sheet is affected by various transactions and events. 

•Use simple methods to calculate product costs, costs of goods sold, and inventory values in job costing and process costing systems as well as other frequently used accounting systems such as Activity Based Costing systems. 

•Prepare a master budget and flexible budgets for a given period based upon known assumptions about resource consumption and business policies. 

•Calculate and analyze variances between actual and budgeted costs for a given period. 

•Utilize accounting based calculations in decisions on prices, product mix, processes and activities. 

Demonstrate competences, such that the student is able to: 

•Choose, describe and use appropriate accounting methods and models for specific items in the annual report; among others revenues, costs of goods sold, financial income and expenses, income taxes, fixed assets, inventories, equity and debt. 

•Choose a suitable accounting system for a firm with known characteristics. 

•Utilize various accounting calculations and statements for the internal management of the firm as a decentralized organization, including among other things budgeting, motivation, control and performance evaluation. 

•Horngren, Charles T.; Gary L. Sundem; John A. Elliot; Donna Philbrick: Introduction to Financial Accounting, Global edition, latest edition, Pearson.

•Horngren, Charles T., Srikant M. Datar, Madhav Rajan: Cost Accounting, latest edition, Prentice Pearson.

Classes are organized such that the teacher in lectures will support the student’s knowledge of main subjects from the course. The student’s understanding of the principles and methods and their skills in using them is supported by TA classes in which possible solutions to exercises, problems and cases related to the subjects dealt with in the weekly classes are discussed. Therefore, students should prepare, preferably in groups, solutions to the exercises, problems and minor cases for the TA classes.

Class hours: 60 hours. 

Preparation for classes: 86 hours. 

TA classes: 30 hours.

Preparation for TA classes: 45 hours. 

Preparation for exams: 45 hours. 

Exams: 4 hours.

Total: 270 hours.

Used examination attempts in the former identical course will be transferred.

Courses that are identical with former courses that are passed according to applied rules cannot be retaken.

The student is automatically registered for the first examination attempt when the student is registered for a course or course element with which one or more examinations are associated. Withdrawal of registration is not possible, and students who fail to participate in an examination have used one examination attempt, unless the University has made an exemption due to special circumstances. 

If a student does not meet the established university prerequisites for taking the exam, he or she has used one examination attempt, unless the University has made an exemption due to special circumstances.

The exam consists of two part examinations. 

The course is passed when the student in each of the two exams has achieved the grade 02 or higher. The two part-examinations can be re-taken separately. The two exams need not be passed in the same academic year. Students cannot re-sit for a part exam in which the result 02 or higher has been obtained.