Accounting information is a key tool for communicating information about an organization’s economic status and for making informed decisions. The course will emphasize the role of accounting information in monitoring, planning, controlling and decision making. It will focus on the managerial uses of accounting information and provide students with an understanding of how managers use accounting information to analyze and evaluate operational performance, including what data to collect, how to gather it, how to display it for efficient decision making. Specific skills acquired will be identifying fixed and variable costs, leading to the ability to calculate break-even points; calculating the present value of cash streams leading to the ability to construct capital budgets; and constructing flexible budgets for variance and differential analyses. Students will also learn how to approach non-routine decisions and interpret financial statements using financial trends and ratio analyses.