Financial Forecasting and Reporting

This course discusses corporate financial statements such as the income statement, balance sheet and statement of cash flows. The course describes how to read and interpret them, using techniques such as ratio analysis to assess a company's financial health. It then shows the process of creating departmental budgets for engineering cost centers and pro forma statements for profit centers. As all future-looking financial estimates involve uncertainty, risk management measures such as scenario analysis and sensitivity analysis are developed to create best-case, most likely case, and worst case analyses. Finally, many businesses today are incorporating various aspects of sustainability into their operations. The course wraps-up with how these initiatives are communicated via annual sustainability reports, using frameworks such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) that ensure transparency and common metrics for investors. This course can be taken for academic credit as part of CU Boulder’s Master of Engineering in Engineering Management (ME-EM) degree offered on the Coursera platform. The ME-EM is designed to help engineers, scientists, and technical professionals move into leadership and management roles in the engineering and technical sectors. With performance-based admissions and no traditional application process, the ME-EM is ideal for individuals with a broad range of undergraduate education and/or professional experience. Learn more about the ME-EM program at https://www.coursera.org/degrees/me-engineering-management-boulder.