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Select a Finance Online Course:
Certificate in Finance Essentials
This online certificate program introduces non-financial managers to the essentials of finance. The course will help you become conversant in critical financial terminology, and you'll learn how to calculate key financial management indicators.
You will learn how to assess your organization's financial health by reviewing balance sheets, income statements, and statements of cash flow, and you will discover how finance and accounting tools can be used to support informed decision making within organizations.
Each 3 to 5 hour, self-paced course offers an assortment of interactive exercises, videos, selected readings, case studies, and self-assessments that engage you and structure your learning about organizational finance.
Our Ask the Expert feature connects you to a network of experts ready to answer any content-related questions you have. You can expect to receive a response within 24 to 48 hours, though some questions are answered the same day they are sent.
Upon successful completion, you can download a printable certificate of completion for this online course suite. The course has no textbooks or prerequisites.
Courses include:
- Financial Planning and Control
- How to Read a Financial Statement
- Introduction to Business Statistics
- Introduction to Finance
- Time Value of Money and Risk
- Understanding and Managing Budgets
These courses are self-paced and online. You will have access to this course for 180 days.
CEUs: 3
Level: Introductory
Estimated Time to Complete: 18-30 hours
Cost: $399
Financial Planning and Control
This course considers practical finance and accounting tools for decision-making within organizations. You will learn about cost benefit analysis, return on investment (ROI), fixed and variable costs, break-even and CVP (cost-volume-profit) analysis, tracking and performance measures, and the Balanced Scorecard and its varied uses.
After completing this course, you’ll be able to:
- Explain cost benefit analysis
- Calculate return on investment and the payback period
- Explain fixed and variable costs
- Calculate breakeven and understand CVP (cost-volume-profit) analysis
- Explain tracking and performance measures
- Explain and calculate Balance Scorecard measures
This course is self-paced and online. You will have access to this course for 30 days.
CEUs: .5
Level: Introductory
Estimated Time to Complete: 3-5 hours
Cost: $79
How to Read a Financial Statement
This course covers financial reports and their meaning. You will learn the fundamentals and importance of the income statement, balance sheet, and statement of cash flows, and how they can be used to manage a business. You will also be exposed to financial (ratio) analysis.
After completing this course, you’ll be able to:
- Identify and describe the documents and financial statements included in an organization’s financial report
- Itemize and interpret the information in the income statement, balance sheet, statement of changes in shareholder’s equity, and statement of cash flows
- Correctly state the impact for specific business activities on cash flow
- Define financial (ratio) analysis and explain its objectives and limitations
- Identify the various types and categories of financial ratios
- Perform calculations using financial ratios
This course is self-paced and online. You will have access to this course for 30 days.
CEUs: .5
Level: Introductory
Estimated time to complete: 3-5 hours
Cost: $79
Introduction to Business Statistics
This course will introduce you to the importance of statistics in the business world. Statistics is the science of collecting, organizing and analyzing data in order to make more effective decisions. Understanding statistical techniques can help any manager responsible for marketing, management, accounting, sales, or other business functions.
This course will cover ways to organize, describe and present data; it also introduces the concept of probability. You will also explore computational methods for presenting data, called descriptive statistics. Further, you'll be exposed to financial (ratio) analysis and its objectives and limitations. By the end of this course, you should be comfortable with financial reports and their meaning.
After completing this course, you’ll be able to:
- Differentiate between descriptive and inferential statistics
- Distinguish between the 4 different scales of measurement: nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio
- Identify the appropriate graphical or tabular method for presenting your data
- Create frequency distributions
- Create meaningful presentations and graphs (including: frequency polygons, bar graphs, pie charts, line graphs, and histograms)
- Calculate probability and explain its practical application
- Compute the mode, median, and mean of a dataset
- Calculate the variance and standard deviation of a dataset
- Interpret sampling with and without replacement
- Explain the significance of the area under a curve
This course is self-paced and online. You will have access to this course for 30 days.
CEUs: .5
Level: Introductory
Estimated Time to complete: 3-5 hours
Cost: $79
Introduction to Finance
This course introduces the discipline of finance in an organizational setting. You'll learn how financial decisions fit into the world of business decision-making and how these choices pose problems, challenges, and opportunities for organizations and individuals.
Among the basics covered: responsibilities of financial managers; roles of finance in a typical business organization; legal forms of businesses; agency relationships; and relevant financial markets of interest to financial managers. Further you will explore the five principles that form the foundation of financial management and you will understand the non-financial manager's impact on, and role in, the finance function.
After completing this course, you’ll be able to:
- Identify and differentiate the three most common types of business organizations and the structure of each
- State the fundamental objectives of a corporation and the differences between wealth and profit maximization
- Recognize the impact of social and ethical responsibility on business
- Identify and describe the structure and functions of the finance department within an organizations
- List and define the key principles that form the foundation of financial management
- Recognize and define the five key financial markets
- Identify the sources, rules and life-cycle stages of corporate financing
- Describe the function of the stock market and the three trading venues it utilizes
- Recognize the factors related to the interest rate determination and the impact of interest on an organization
This course is self-paced and online. You will have access to this course for 30 days.
CEUs: .5
Level: Introductory
Estimated time to complete: 3-5 hours
Cost: $79
Time Value of Money and Risk
This finance course covers Time Value of Money (TVM) principles and Risk and Return. You will review the basic TVM techniques used in evaluating all financial decisions and their cash flow implications. For Risk and Return, you will learn how risk influences investment decisions, and how to calculate risk and rates of return. Further, you will explore the benefits of diversification and the use of the portfolio concept in investing.
After completing this course, you'll be able to:
- Distinguish between points in time and periods of time as shown by a time line
- Define compounding and discounting
- Compute future value or present value for single payment amounts
- Distinguish between single payments and streams of payments and between uneven streams and annuities
- Solve for the interest rate or time period for simple present value and future value problems
- Define risk
- Describe how risk influences investment decisions
- Calculate risk and rates of return
- Describe how diversification can limit risk
- Explain how diversifiable risk can be lowered using a portfolio approach
This course is self-paced and online. You will have access to this course for 30 days.
CEUs: .5
Level: Introductory
Estimated time to complete: 3-5 hours
Cost: $79
Understanding and Managing Budgets
This course covers budgets and how they are used in organizational settings. You will gain an understanding of the uses and functions of master budgets, operating budgets, sales, production and cost of goods sold budgets, and cash budgets. You will also learn how organizations are using different budgeting techniques to deal with operating challenges.
After completing this course, you'll be able to:
- Recognize the uses and functions of budgeting
- Recognize the key activities, considerations, and benefits of strategic organizational planning
- Recognize the purpose and make-up of a master budget
- Identify the components and calculations used to create a master budget and recognize uses for this information
- Identify the components and purpose of an operating budget
- Recognize how sales, production, and cost of goods sold budgets are created and perform related calculations
- Recognize the purpose of cash budgets and how they are prepared
- Identify ways the budget process can be managed for optimal results and recognize the benefits and limitations of the management-by-objective system
This course is self-paced and online. You will have access to this course for 30 days
CEUs: .5
Level: Introductory
Estimated time to complete: 3-5 hours
Cost: $79
