Principles of Accounting

The Bachelor's Degree in Economics and Management (EMA) is characterized by the course in Financial Statements Analysis, which provides students with practical tools for interpreting the quantitative and qualitative dimensions related to the economic trend and the financial and asset situation of companies. These skills are crucial in understanding how the economic variables, learned and analyzed in other courses of the degree program, are achieved within different companies and how they are influenced by internal decision-making policies.
The purpose of the course is twofold.
First, the objective of the course is to provide students with the theoretical bases, practical skills and best practices for the study and analysis of the financial statements of companies that use the Italian accounting principles issued by the OIC (Organismo Italiano di Contabilità - Italian Accounting Body), with short insights to the financial statements prepared according to the IAS/IFRS (International Accounting Standards/International Financial Reporting Standards).
Second, the course aims to provide knowledge for financial statements analysis in order to understand the business trend and in order to evaluate, both historically and prospectively, the policies and decisions essential for the growth and profitability of the company.
This two goals are pursued through the study and exercise of the students on: the understanding of the purpose of the financial statements and the logic of the related values; the preparation of the financial statements according to the national accounting principles and current regulations; and, finally, the analysis of the financial statements dimensions through the calculation and interpretation of its indexes and margins.

At the end of the course the students will be able to:
- understand the mechanisms and the fundamental relationships between the financial statements variables;
- apply knowledge by drawing up the financial statements in accordance with OIC Italian accounting principles;
- identify the appropriate financial statements indexes to describe specific types of economic trend and financial and asset situation of the company;
- use the financial statements indexes to analyze the health status of the company under review;
- comment on the performance and evolution of the health status of the company;
- identify potential corrective policies and improvement of the company's health status on the basis of used indexes.