Course Summary
Today, organizations create and collect massive amounts of data, and accounting professionals are using analytics to provide data-driven insights and recommendations to stakeholders. Understanding how to identify accounting and auditing questions, use data to answer those questions, and communicate insights to decision-makers provides an opportunity for accountants to be trusted business advisors.
This course will prepare you to think critically about how to leverage accounting data to make decisions, mainly in the financial accounting and auditing contexts. You will develop an analytics mindset through hands-on assignments and projects using common software applications adopted in practice. These assignments involve manipulating and transforming raw data into workable data sets, using data visualization and other tools to analyze the data for decision-making purposes, and communicating the analyses’ results. The course will also expose you to practitioner and academic perspectives on analytics.
During this course you will:
- Develop and use an analytics mindset to ask and answer accounting and auditing questions;
- Analyze data to identify patterns or anomalies indicating a heightened risk of misstated financial information;
- Summarize the results of your analyses to communicate your findings;
- Identify common data pitfalls and recognize elements of effective visual design;
- Use multiple software tools to manipulate data and perform analyses; and
- Describe the role and purpose of technology and data analytics in the accounting profession.