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Learner reviews & feedback for Understanding Financial Statements: Company Performance

4.7792 reviews

About this course

This course is designed to provide a basic understanding of financial statements with an emphasis on the income statement. Building on the foundation formed in the first course, you will learn about the third of our three measurement questions and how the income statement helps to answer this final measurement question. Returning to the real business people introduced in the first course, this second course describes the basic content of income statement in a simple yet relevant context. The course ends by summarizing many of the lessons learned in both courses to leave you with a lasting impression about what financial statements are and how accounting can work for you. We all know that accounting is “the language of business”; let’s make learning this language engaging, and perhaps even fun!

Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to: • Describe the purpose of an income statement. • Define the basic components of an income statement. • Recognize and understand the meaning of several items typically presented on an income statement. • Explain the broader purpose of financial statements and the role of accounting in producing the financial statements. • Read and, to some extent, interpret real-world income statements. If you enjoy this business course and are interested in an MBA, consider applying to the iMBA, a flexible, fully-accredited online MBA at an incredibly competitive price offered by the University of Illinois. For more information, please see the Resource page in this course and onlinemba.illinois.edu.

Featured reviews

4.0Reviewed Sep 30, 2019

It was a great learning experience. This course provided the necessary foundation for students to have a better understanding what will they encounter in a more advance lecture.

5.0Reviewed Aug 27, 2022

This class provided all the information I needed to learn to understand the critical parts of the Income statement and how to use them to evaluate a company's performance.

4.0Reviewed Dec 28, 2020

Prof. Gary Hecht is quite challenging. You wonder whether he uses the testing information forpractise but either way you learn and understand the material he teachs.

5.0Reviewed Oct 29, 2020

The course was informative and very easy to understand. Thank you so much Professor Kevin Jackson!

5.0Reviewed Dec 18, 2020

This course will help me advance my career and the lecturer was absolutely amazing and skillful. Thank you!

5.0Reviewed Aug 4, 2020

The course was very useful for knowledge enhancement. The subject was taken in depth that too in a simple way.

5.0Reviewed Apr 20, 2020

Great course! Helps pinpoint the reason financial statements are so vital to helping both insiders and outsiders of a company judge performance.

5.0Reviewed Apr 28, 2020

Subject and content was good and very easy to understand. Videos given was a brilliant ideas to explain more about the topic. I also love how Coursera give me the certificate of completion.

5.0Reviewed Apr 17, 2020

Good course that helpful for me to futher understand the financial statement on how the company performed

5.0Reviewed Apr 21, 2020

Great course to learn. We can have simple and easy way to understand the financial statement on company performance.

5.0Reviewed Feb 26, 2017

Great set of courses for a beginner in the accounting field. Informative and well taught. Thanks to Kevin Jackson for making potentially complicated subject matter simple and easy to relate to.

4.0Reviewed Mar 27, 2017

The course explains in very simple ways the essentials for understanding how companies actually perform, although it would be helpful if they used more examples to explain the ratios.

All reviews

Showing: 20 of 193

Michael Kimber

5.0

Reviewed Aug 17, 2017

Outstanding course. The instructor does an excellent job of simplifying complex ideas to make your learning and understanding more meaningful and easy to grasp.

Trevor Beecroft

5.0

Reviewed Feb 27, 2017

Great set of courses for a beginner in the accounting field. Informative and well taught. Thanks to Kevin Jackson for making potentially complicated subject matter simple and easy to relate to.

YEW THEAN CHYE

5.0

Reviewed Apr 28, 2020

Excellent course - modules have been made easy to understand with notes as well as video presentation

Course leader speaks clearly in pleasant and relaxed manner

Time frame allocated is very generous as one may be able to complete ahead of schedule

Highly recommended for those who with or without financial background

Himanshu

5.0

Reviewed Jan 25, 2019

Less video content, well explained with real life examples , best course to learn the basic of financial statements.

Hailey Schmidt

4.0

Reviewed Aug 10, 2016

This course is much better put together than the one on company position (balance sheet). It's still not terribly in-depth, but as an overview for those unfamiliar with accounting, it has quite a bit of good information.

Cristobal Skinner-Klee

4.0

Reviewed Mar 28, 2017

The course explains in very simple ways the essentials for understanding how companies actually perform, although it would be helpful if they used more examples to explain the ratios.

Victor Viena

4.0

Reviewed May 30, 2017

It is a great course about accounting!

Thea Vejtasa

5.0

Reviewed Apr 21, 2020

Great course! Helps pinpoint the reason financial statements are so vital to helping both insiders and outsiders of a company judge performance.

Cady

5.0

Reviewed Dec 19, 2019

Very engaging video! The instructor is so clear and thorough. Thank you for this information!

MOHAMMAD ZARRIS AKHMAR BIN ZAKARIA

5.0

Reviewed Apr 26, 2020

This course improves my analytical skill & decision making.

Stella Aibazova

5.0

Reviewed Dec 30, 2018

Very good course

Hào Nguyễn

4.0

Reviewed Feb 6, 2018

The course provides a lot of useful and informative reading materials. However, somehow I feel the lectures are not well connected with those readings. Plus we don't have any maths problems to practice the theory we learn.

NORZILA BT ABD RANI

4.0

Reviewed Apr 26, 2020

Very informative with simple and understand English use. Easy to access

Belal Kassem

4.0

Reviewed Jan 24, 2017

it was a great experience.

Latoya Henderson

4.0

Reviewed Apr 26, 2017

Great Course!

Jay Gullapalli

5.0

Reviewed Feb 26, 2022

I would rate 4.5 for this course. -0.5 is for below CONS about the course:

PROS: This was great follow up course after the first course "Understanding Financial Statements: Company Position". Course was concise and easy to understand for folks like me who want to understand accounting and financial statements but do not want to get to specialize in it. Weekly graded quizzes with 20 questions had a good mix of all the concepts discussed during the week. CONS: Discussion forums seem to be quiet and not engaging. I think unless the course staff plays a very active role, we will not see much learning from the discussion forums. I have heartburn with Peer Graded Assignments. This is a bad choice of evaluation on Coursera. My fellow students who are learning along with me might not be the right choice to review the assignments. Feedback can be none, or vague, or judgmental, or might even lack the knowledge to provide the feedback since we are all still learning. Having to wait for someone to grade our assignment and also wait very long to grade other students assignments is not a good use of time. We should not be wasting our time posting links to our assignment in the discussion forum. Discussion forms are getting spammed with links to assignments and the students requesting someone to pick their assignment for grading. Week 4 discussion forum and General Discussion forums are spammed and are a mess because of this activity. For the final peer graded assignment, instructions could have been better.

One additional video from professor which demonstrates analysis using the income statment would have been great for learning.

Dax Chee

5.0

Reviewed Jun 19, 2017

I would have hated this course but the mentor Mr. Jackson just did the course so well, he should be the one making all the courses that you have under this module. I learned a lot from him and I am able to directly relate his reasoning, his real life considerations to the business i am handling right now, and more than understanding the concepts, I am now inspired to learn more!

TEE SHIN ROU

5.0

Reviewed Apr 16, 2020

This course is helping me to have a better understanding about company financial statement. By looking through a company financial statement, I can evaluate their financial performance as well. This course is really helpful and related to my job function.

Lim Jiang Yi

5.0

Reviewed Apr 20, 2020

It is a very good platform for me to gain knowledge here. It is very useful either for both study or working. It helps me to understand how to review a company income statement to identify whether the company is having a good or weak performance.

SYAHRIZAN BINTI MOHD ZIN

5.0

Reviewed Apr 28, 2020

Subject and content was good and very easy to understand. Videos given was a brilliant ideas to explain more about the topic. I also love how Coursera give me the certificate of completion.