Video Transcript: Introduction - Michael Interviews Marlene Greene
Hello, welcome. We want to introduce the fundamentals of accounting. One. I'm Professor Michael Green. You probably know me from a few of the other classes you may have taken. This is my mother, Marlene. She was the professor for this course. And we just want to share a little bit with you in detail about some of the things we're going to cover and some of the highlights of the accounting course. So Marlene, what are some of the aspects of accounting that you think that is
fundamental for them to know up front as they prepare for this course? This course is a very basic introduction to accounting. The most important thing to get from this course is the accounting equation. If you it's very important to master that equation. If you do not master that equation, the rest is futile. Yeah. So you need to understand the credit and debit side. You need to make sure this journaled correctly, so that way we can assess how our company is operating and cash flow is entering and leaving the business. What do you think the cash flow cycle, and any of those other highlight, highlighted points you want to bring up that you think that they may want to know as far as so you're going to start with your basics. The all companies, in the end, produce financial statements, and this is what this course leads up to. The end result is your financial statements, your balance sheet, describes the health of your company. The income statement reveals whether you're making a profit or you're losing for that month, your cash flow statement, it's going to show in three different areas, your investments, your day to day operations. Or, excuse me, I'm sorry, how your outflows are going, how your inflows are coming in. So you know, the operating statements are vital to understanding how the business is operating, and accounting allows you to have those inputs into the into your operating statements. So yeah, so really, we want to make sure that you understand the dynamic of accounting, that it's kind of the lifeblood of the operation. And so when you do present, you know, bottom line figures to maybe your board of directors, or anybody that votes that are common stock shareholders, you know, they can have, you know, transparency into the operation. They can see that, you know, for one, if you are publicly traded, the SEC may have an option to audit you to ensure that you are making correct marks a market, or whatever kind of accounting system that you have inside your operation, you want to make sure that that's transparent, that people can see that this is how much liquidity we have, X, Y and Z assets, etc, etc. So the accounting process really helps you understand and have a deep dive, peeling the layers of the onion back idea of how the company is operating, from a cash perspective to an asset perspective to an expenses perspective. So I'm sure there are several equations that are worked out throughout this class that will help refine and help you understand where those processes come from, how to implement them, and then how to apply them for, you know, the sole purposes of accounting. So thank you for your time in developing this class. We are very appreciative of you, and I'm sure that the students that take this class will enjoy this class, and they'll
get a lot out of it, and hopefully have a greater understanding of accounting standards that are operational in business. Thank you. Thank you.