Skip to content

CFS 101: Financial Accounting
Course Code CFS 101
Course Name Financial Accounting
Department Business
Semester Offered Odd (Term 1)
Tuition Hours 30 hours
Course Level Foundational
Pre-requisite -
Co-requisite FTM 101, TFS 101
Course Objective Financial Accounting is the language that every serious business builder must speak fluently. Before you raise capital, before you scale operations, before you make strategic decisions, you must understand what your business is actually doing with money.

This course teaches students how to translate real-world business activity into structured financial statements and, more importantly, how to read between the lines of those statements. Numbers do not just report reality, they often hide it. Learning to decode them is a core entrepreneurial skill.

By the end of this course, students will not just prepare income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements, but will develop the instinct to question, interpret, and challenge financial narratives. Accounting should stop feeling like compliance and start feeling like x-ray vision into any business.
Course Philosophy This course emphasizes
  • Reality before rules: understand the business activity first, then map it to accounting
  • Interpretation before preparation: statements matter only if you can extract insight from them
  • Skepticism over blind trust: numbers can mislead, good operators question them
Students will build accounts not as bookkeepers, but as operators who need clarity to make decisions.
Course Learning Outcomes Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:
  • Construct complete financial statements from raw business transactions with accuracy.
  • Apply double-entry bookkeeping principles and understand how every transaction flows through the system.
  • Analyze income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements to evaluate business performance and financial health.
  • Distinguish between profit and cash flow, and understand why businesses fail despite being “profitable”.
  • Identify red flags and inconsistencies in financial statements that may indicate poor decisions or manipulation.
  • Use accounting as a decision-making tool in building and managing real businesses, especially in early-stage environments.
Course Author Sagar Udasi
MSc Statistics and Data Science with Computational Finance from The University of Edinburgh.
Contact: sagar.l.udasi@gmail.com
Course Organiser TBD
No. Lecture Title Concepts Covered Lecture Objective
01 Why Every Business Is Just Numbers in Disguise Purpose of accounting, financial statements overview, business as a system of transactions Helps students connect real business activity to structured reporting, crucial for their fintech capstone
02 The Only Rule That Matters: Double Entry Debits, credits, accounting equation, transaction flows Builds the core mental model that powers all accounting systems
03 How Transactions Become Stories Recording transactions, journals, ledgers Teaches how raw activity turns into interpretable financial data
04 The Balance Sheet: What You Own vs What You Owe Assets, liabilities, equity, structure and interpretation Helps students understand financial position, key for evaluating businesses
05 Income Statement: Profit Is Not What You Think Revenue, expenses, profit, accrual vs cash Introduces the gap between reported profit and actual reality
06 Cash Flow: The Only Truth That Matters Operating, investing, financing cash flows Builds instinct for liquidity and survival, critical for early-stage ventures
07 Accrual Accounting Will Mess With Your Intuition Revenue recognition, matching principle, accrual adjustments Helps students understand why accounting diverges from cash reality
08 Building Financial Statements From Scratch Integrated statement building, linking all statements Students construct full statements, preparing for real-world application
09 When Revenue Lies Revenue recognition issues, timing manipulation Teaches skepticism and critical analysis of reported growth
10 Costs That Hide in Plain Sight Fixed vs variable costs, hidden expenses, unit economics Connects accounting to business decision-making
11 Working Capital: The Silent Killer Inventory, receivables, payables, cash cycles Helps students understand operational efficiency and liquidity risks
12 Depreciation Is Not Just Accounting Fiction Depreciation methods, asset lifecycle, capital expenditure Builds understanding of long-term investment and reporting
13 Reading Financial Statements Like an Investor Ratio analysis, margins, returns, efficiency metrics Directly supports investment capstone thinking
14 Spotting Red Flags Before Everyone Else Earnings manipulation, accounting tricks, warning signals Develops forensic mindset early
15 Building Financial Models for Real Decisions Forecasting basics, linking assumptions to statements Connects accounting with decision-making and modeling
16 Accounting for Startups and Early-Stage Chaos Lean accounting, burn rate, runway, simplified reporting Aligns directly with student-built fintech ventures
17 Case Study: A Startup That Looked Profitable But Died Real-world failure analysis using financials Reinforces importance of cash flow and discipline
18 Case Study: A Business That Survived Against Odds Financial resilience, capital allocation decisions Shows how accounting drives survival decisions
19 Building Your Capstone Financial Backbone Applying accounting to fintech product economics Direct application to capstone project
20 Final Integration: Numbers, Decisions, Reality Full system integration, interpretation, decision frameworks Ensures students leave with a usable mental model
Component Weightage
Practical Assignments (2 total) 40%
Financial Statement Build Project 20%
Final Written Examination (2 hours) 40%
Type Resource Provider
Lecture Accounting Fundamentals :contentReference[oaicite:0]{index=0}
Lecture Introduction to Financial Accounting :contentReference[oaicite:1]{index=1}
Reading Financial Accounting :contentReference[oaicite:2]{index=2}, :contentReference[oaicite:3]{index=3}
Reading The Interpretation of Financial Statements :contentReference[oaicite:4]{index=4}