Learning about how to create basic financial statements is integral to an accounting course. Students learn how to organize the statements' substantial amounts of information. If you learn how to prepare a financial statement through an accounting course, you can supply this information to business owners, managers, lenders, customers, suppliers, the government and the public.
The income statement is also known as the "profit and loss account," because it displays the profits and losses of an organization during an accounting period. The skills you learn in an accounting class will allow you to use income statements to investigate the performance of the organization's business. This information and set of skills is useful for companies, competitors and any existing shareholders.
An organization's balance sheet shows the value of that organization's assets. If you know how to analyze a balance sheet, you can understand the details of a company's funding. This allows you to determine the stability of a company. The skill set required to understand and use a balance sheet can be learned through an accounting course. Many companies seek employees with the ability to analyze balance sheets in order to determine an operation's financial stability.
In an accounting course, you learn how to interpret important financial statements. You need to ask the right questions and know how to find their answers. For example, if you want to determine an organization's efficiency, profitability and liquidity, you need to properly assess its income statements and balance sheets. By learning these fundamentals in an accounting course, you can help a company and any existing shareholders evaluate its profitability.