Business Analysis & Reporting (BAR) Graduate Certificate

This course will focus on accounting for state and local governments, accounting for private non-profit organizations, and accounting for bankruptcy and legal reorganizations. Students will also learn the modified accrual basis of accounting used by state and local governments and certain types of other nonprofit organizations, the budget accounting and the fund accounting standards set by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB). Analyzing comprehensive cases, critical problem solving and reading professional and academic journals will be the integral parts of this course.
Prerequisite: Take AC-221 AC-331 AC-332

This course will focus on advanced level financial accounting topics, such as derivatives and hedge accounting and financial valuation methods and decision models. Students will also learn about the FASB's accounting standard setting procedures, classification and interpretation of the notes in financial statements, emerging reporting frameworks, as well as how to make informed decisions.

This course provides a practical foundation to understand the impact of Data Analytics on Accounting, Auditing, and Financial Reporting. The student, through a hands-on methodology, will learn how to identify business questions that can be addressed with data, and then testing the data, refining the testing, and finally communicating the findings.

In this course, students will demonstrate the ability to extract, transform, and load data, apply data mining techniques to a data set, and interpret appropriate predictive and prescriptive analysis. The focus will be on the designing and interpretation of the results of a Key Performance Indicators (KPI) dashboard, what-if analysis, and the assumptions about and evaluations of data models for appropriate checks and balances. Students will also be introduced the concepts of audit analysis and the skills needed to extract, manipulate, analyze, and summarize tax data to solve tax problems.