Accountancy Undergraduate Courses

An introduction to financial accounting and the accounting profession, with an emphasis on the decision-usefulness of accounting information. The course stresses the relation of accounting to economic activity, organizing information for decision-making, the resource acquisition decision, the uses of cash and noncash resources, the accounting for selling and manufacturing activities, and the information needs of multiple owners, lenders and equity holders. A prerequisite of all accountancy and finance courses.

An introduction to the use of accounting information and analysis for management decisions and control of an organization. The purpose of the course is to learn techniques necessary to understand an organization’s costs to allow for the preparation and analysis of an organization’s budget. Further, the course provides techniques to analyze cost-volume-profit relationships and the use of a company’s contribution margin to evaluate sales volumes, set appropriate selling prices, and determine appropriate sales mixes necessary to achieve desired profit levels. The course uses cost analysis to understand managerial decisions such as whether to outsource, eliminate or add a business segment, and accept special orders. The course also introduces US taxation by examining different entity types and various taxes that impact individuals and corporations.

Fair and transparent information about business enterprises is essential to the effective functioning of capital markets and the fairness of resource distribution across society. Accounting Measurement & Disclosure I provides an in-depth examination of how accounting provides decision-useful information to improve business decisions and cultivate a prosperous society. The primary goals are to understand the role financial accounting plays in providing useful information about the underlying economics of business transactions, to understand the principles that shape financial reporting and disclosure practices, and to evaluate the motivations that lead managers to select one accounting principle over another. The course illustrates these issues through coverage of the economics and accounting related to revenue recognition, cash flows, receivables, inventory, long-lived assets, liabilities, and other financial statement elements. Further, the course develops accounting research skills through written case assignments that require students to analyze and apply the Accounting Standards Codification to complex accounting issues.

Continues the study of financial accounting. Topics include accounting for income taxes, leases, stock-based compensation, pension plans, and equity investments including passive investments, equity method investments, and consolidated reporting for majority-owned operations. Contractual and economic issues, contemporary developments, and financial disclosures are integral parts of each topical discussion. The course is designed to strengthen the technical, communication, and critical thinking skills required to succeed in accounting-related careers.
Prerequisite: ACCT 30110

This course applies data analytics to settings within accounting, using statistics as the primary method and Microsoft Excel as the primary tool along with other add-ins and programs. The aim of the course is to enhance a student’s ability to think systematically about data, structure it into a usable and interpretable form, create decision models, and weigh probability, risk, trade-offs, and the limitations of data.

In this course students will learn about the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ecosystem, including, but not limited to, factors influencing stakeholders’ demand for ESG information, current and emerging U.S. and international ESG accounting and reporting standards and frameworks, financial and double materiality throughout the U.S. and global jurisdictions, differences between mandatory and voluntary ESG disclosures, accounting for greenhouse gas emissions and the concept of climate risk, ESG metrics and raters, independent third-party assurance on the reliability of ESG information, and current and emerging corporate practices that link executive compensation to ESG metrics. The course concludes with a discussion of impact investing as a discipline and how capital markets and investment strategies deliver societal and environmental impact and generate market returns. Students will interact with guest speakers, discuss case studies and current press articles, and will participate in lively debates and capstone projects presentations.

A30210 at the University of Notre Dame is the second of a two-course sequence that addresses cost and management accounting. It is a required course for accounting majors that builds on and reinforces concepts from the first course, Accounting and Accountancy II (A20200). This course is designed to help students become discriminating producers and users of strategic cost accounting information for decision making. This course demonstrates how cost management analysts can add value to their organizations by providing recommendations to improve profitability of products, services and customers. The course also focuses on measuring causes or drivers of costs, and making managerial recommendations about capacity and processes.
Prerequisite: ACCT 20200

The course provides coverage of various advanced topics in accounting and financial reporting for combined entities including mergers, acquisitions, noncontrolling interests, control premiums, intra-entity transfers, and international subsidiaries. The course will help students to become familiar with the financial procedures and information flows that accompany mergers and acquisitions. The course is designed to help students develop their research, communication, and critical thinking skills within the context of financial reporting for mergers and acquisitions.

This course will advance and apply your skills in the analytical tools most commonly used in current accounting and financial consulting practices, and will include applications in regulatory compliance, financial management and reporting, investment analysis, forecasting,  valuation and simulations, operations management, forensics, and financial analysis.  You will use advanced Excel techniques in forensic and financial analytics, as well as extraction, transformation, visualization, regression, natural language processing and data management tools in Tableau, Alteryx, and Python.  These analytical skills will allow you to identify areas where you can add value by identifying anomalies with respect to fraud, internal controls, or key financial, audit risk, and/or tax positions and the associated risk or opportunity for clients and stakeholders.  Moreover, you will have confidence in the topics commonly used in financial analysis and incorporated into the new CPA Evolution 2024 for applied technology, including: relational databases, normalization of data, structured and unstructured data, data extraction and transformation, forecasting to model financial results, cybersecurity, sensitivity analysis, and predictive analytics.

The study of an independent accountant’s assurance, attestation, and audit services. Topics include evidence, risk, standards, control, reports, liability, and ethics.
Prerequisite: ACCT 30110

This course is intended to help students acquire a broad perspective of taxation that is relevant for current as well as future tax regimes. The basic federal income tax provisions applicable to individuals, sole proprietorships, corporations and small business firms are covered in this course, which emphasizes their rational and significance in business and investment decision-making. The course is an integrated blend of tax law, tax-planning, tax research, accounting, economics, and finance.
Prerequisite: ACCT 20100

The use of the corporate form of operating a business is growing in popularity in the United States for both tax and non-tax reasons. This course provides an in-depth study of federal income tax laws as they are applied to corporations and shareholders. Topics to be examined include: definition of a corporation for tax purposes; the problems of forming a corporation, including the design of the corporation’s capital structure; computation of the corporate tax liability for individual corporations and controlled groups of corporations; taxation of S corporations; penalty surtaxes (i.e., the personal holding company tax and the accumulated earnings tax) applicable to corporations; payment of non-liquidating distributions to the corporation’s shareholders; tax consequences of liquidating the corporate entity and corporate reorganizations. Students will be required to complete both a Form 1120 and 1120S and, working in groups, write up solutions to tax research assignments and case studies.

This course is designed with two objectives in mind: (1) Expand students’ perspective of accounting beyond GAAP by exploring the economics of corporate disclosure in the capital markets, namely with respect to information flows and key economic agents; and (2) Introduce students to capital market research with an emphasis on corporate disclosure research. Topics covered in the course include disclosure regulation, information overload, managerial myopia, earnings guidance, conference calls, selective disclosure, and emerging technologies as well as institutional details and research regarding key economic agents (boards, auditors, financial press, analysts and investors).

The course is designed to raise students’ ability to recognize and resolve ethical issues in sports, but also more broadly in business, accounting and life. Accordingly, this course will ask students to examine a variety of issues through various ethical lenses. Topics will vary from semester to semester, but are likely to include the ethical dimensions of: college athletics, including amateurism, compensation, and unionization; wellness, focusing on everything from finances to doping; corruption, including gambling, college academic and admissions scandals, and FIFA; and sports and the common good, i.e., can sports advance issues as diverse as gender and racial equity and sustainable economic development in the form of stadium construction and hosting the Olympic Games. In addition to critical thinking, students will be well served by curiosity, skepticism and keeping an open mind. Requirements typically include in-class participation, a presentation on a current ethical issue in sports, and two exams.

This course is designed to develop future sustainability leaders by active engagement with key participants, critical synthesis of research on measurement of climate change effects and movement toward quantifiable achievable goals. The interdisciplinary course will focus on measurement and assurance of measurement (auditing) both of which fall within the clear purview of accountants. The course is offered for juniors, seniors, accounting honors and graduate students.

This is an experiential learning course. Students enrolled in the course will have classroom instruction for the first month. The classroom instruction will focus on the fundamentals of federal and Indiana state income tax returns. Students will also be trained on the IRS provided tax return preparation software. Beginning in February, students will work in the South Bend and Mishawaka community to provide income tax preparation services to low-income individuals and families.

This course involves the application of the following legal topics to business situations: organization structures and entity selection, secured transactions and creditor rights, commercial paper / negotiable instruments, real and personal property, real estate, and a general overview of estate and trust law. Highly recommended for students planning to sit for the CPA exam.
Prerequisite: BALW 30100

The course is designed to raise students’ level of awareness and ability to recognize ethical issues facing the accounting profession and accounting professionals. Course learning objectives include understanding key concepts, and improving students’ skills of moral reasoning and ethical decision making.
Prerequisite: BAET 20300

To introduce students to the accounting practices of fund accounting as it relates to governmental and not-for-profit organizations. The class will also provide a basic understanding of these entities to students who will either work in the not-for-profit sector or who will be exposed to them in public accounting. The class will be both theory and practice oriented.

The purpose of this course is to introduce the student to accounting issues and tools relevant for a business engaged in international operations. The course is centered on accounting aspects of a U.S. firm doing business abroad. In the process, U.S. accounting and reporting features are compared and contrasted against those of other countries. Topics covered in the course include the study of international financial reporting standards (IFRS) and their comparison to US GAAP, foreign currency transactions and hedging, translation of foreign currency financial statements, taxation of foreign earned income for US expatriates and US corporations, international transfer prices, performance evaluation of foreign business units, international auditing, corporate governance and the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Prerequisite: ACCT 20200

Academic Research in Accounting expands students’ perspectives of accounting beyond GAAP by introducing, via a seminar style format, students to capital markets research with an emphasis on broad accounting topics. Topics covered include audit quality, earnings management, fair value accounting, ownership structure, linguistics, and the role of gender and diversity on firm performance. The course introduces students to research methods, illustrates a protocol to interpret research, and uses the protocol to probe in detail issues important to accounting regulators. The course trains students to be consumers of research that bears on important issues in accounting. Following completion of the course, students will understand the role of science in accounting and how to interpret academic accounting research.

Whether you own or are employed by a business, you must understand your rights and obligations under the American legal system. This course touches on some of the most important aspects of the legal system as it affects business and employment, including the courts and legal proceedings, the law of contracts, agency, torts, and intellectual property. Students will develop an appreciation of how law affects business decision-making, of competing policy concerns underlying the law, and of ethical dimensions of legal issues and business situations.