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Financial Accounting (ACCT611/612)
(formerly ACCT620/621)
Course Description
Financial Accounting (ACCT611/612) DESCRIPTION 7
The role of accounting is the accumulation, analysis, and presentation of relevant financial data of
an enterprise to serve the needs of decision-makers. The provision of multiple-purpose information
to serve the needs of interested parties outside a firm’s management is referred to as financial
accounting. The objective of the core requirement in financial accounting is to teach the basic
concepts, standards, and practices of financial reporting, leading to the ability to read and understand
published financial statements.
“TRACKS” WITHIN FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING
Students entering the MBA program at Wharton come with diverse backgrounds in financial
accounting. Some are Certified Public Accountants with extensive academic and professional
training. Others have had a course or two at school or in training programs. Other students enter
Wharton with no exposure to financial accounting. As a result, we offer two courses with which
students can meet the financial accounting requirement: ACCT611 (a full-semester, 1 credit
unit course) and ACCT612 (a half-semester, 0.5 credit unit course). The difference between
the two is the material covered and the amount of time allotted to each topic. For example, ACCT
611 reviews basic accounting transactions, debits and credits, and income statement and balance
sheet preparation, while ACCT612 does not. Students have three options for fulfilling their financial
accounting requirement. They can:
1. Waive financial accounting altogether, either by credential or exam.
2. Place into the accelerated course (ACCT612) either by credential or exam. Students in
ACCT612 are presumed to understand the following concepts:
the recording of economic transactions in the accounting records
(i.e., bookkeeping);
the basic financial statements which summarize a firm’s economic transactions
(the balance sheet, the income statement and the statement of cash flows);
the fundamental concepts needed to prepare and understand published financial
statements (e.g., use of accrual accounting);
how to construct the basic financial statements from transactions information and
how to recreate the transactions by looking at the financial statements;
how to use the indirect method to construct the cash flow statement from balance
sheet, cash receipt, and supplemental information; and
how to use accounting statements and disclosures to reconstruct the underlying
economic events in which the firm participated.
3. Take the full-semester course (ACCT611).