Program Overview

Finance Essentials Program

The Finance Essentials program, offered by California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) in partnership with MindEdge, is designed to guide learners in organizing and interpreting the financial health of standard business operations. By understanding budgeting and the time-value of money, as well as risk and return on investment (ROI), learners will gain the ability to read financial data and turn insights into impactful decisions that move businesses forward.

Program Overview

This program will help learners become familiar with critical financial terminology and understand how to calculate key financial management indicators. The program is ideal for business people interested in improving their understanding of standard financial business practices and non-financial managers who desire to learn, understand, and implement financial information into successful business practices and decisions.

Features and Benefits

• The program is entirely online, in a self-paced instructor-facilitated format that allows learners to study at their own pace and on their own schedule.
• The curriculum balances academic excellence with real-world practice, featuring text, video, interactivity, adaptive learning technology, quiz banks, and other features not available in a traditional textbook.

Topics Include

• Critical financial terminology
• Budgeting and budgeting strategies
• Reading and understanding income statements, and statements of cash flow
• The concepts of the time-value of money
• How to read financial statements and interpret data reports
• Standard Return On Investment (ROI) strategies and practices
• How to assess financial health by reviewing balance sheets
• Using financial reports and accounting tools to support informed decision-making

Program Outline

The program consists of several courses, including:

• Finance Essentials: Introduces financial managers and non-financial managers to the essentials of finance, helping them become familiar with critical financial terminology and learn how to calculate key financial management indicators.
• Introduction to Finance: Details the responsibilities of financial managers, the roles of finance in a typical business organization, and relevant financial markets of interest to financial managers.
• Financial Planning and Control: Teaches finance concepts to financial managers and non-financial managers, including reviewing tools for decision-making such as cost-benefit analysis, break-even analysis, and Balanced Scorecard.
• How to Read a Financial Statement: Covers financial reports and their meaning, including the fundamentals and importance of income statements, balance sheets, and statements of cash flows.
• Introduction to Business Statistics: Provides an understanding of statistical techniques that can help any manager make better decisions, covering graphical representations of data.
• Time-Value of Money and Risk: Covers time-value of money (TVM) principles as well as risk and return, including the basic TVM techniques used in evaluating all financial decisions and their cash flow implications.
• Understanding and Managing Budgets: Covers budgets and how they are used in organizational settings, including the uses and functions of master budgets, operating budgets, sales, production and cost of goods sold budgets, and cash budgets.

Location

The program is offered online, providing flexibility and convenience for learners.