Starting a business involves planning, making key financial decisions, and completing a series of legal activities. Scroll down to learn about each step.

A set of instructional videos paired with a simple assessment. Learners that get a passing score are awarded a digital badge.

Topics covered:

Speaking Professionally
Communicating Digitally
Nonverbal Communication
Understanding How to Listen

This is an introductory course in managerial accounting that transfers to four year institutions. It is commonly the last accounting class for the transfer student intent on a Bachelor’s Degree in Business/Economics fields.

At the conclusion of Accounting 203 you will have developed an understanding of the following:

The users of managerial accounting information
The basics of job order and process costing
Understand and determine cost behaviors
Prepare production and cash budgets
Understand the basics of variance analysis

This course is a review of the fundamental concepts of accounting. The focus is on financial statements that a firm prepares each year. How entries are recorded in accounts to capture all economic activity of the firm is explained. How accounts are organized and what transactions are entered there, are studied. Year-end entries and the accrual method of accounting are described.

After completing this review course the student should have an adequate understanding of
- how the financial position of a firm is represented in its financial statement
- how most common transactions are handled
- why the accrual method of accounting is useful to reflect the financial position of the firm
- the importance of organizing an accounting system that meets the needs of the firm
- what the income statement and balance sheet represent

This course is a review of concepts of how accounting is designed to help management make its most important financial decisions. It starts by reviewing the principles that should guide accounting in order to serve the purpose for which accounting is designed. Accounting for different business forms is contrasted. Analytical approaches for decisions related to the cost of production, volume and investment are introduced. The emphasis is on the ability of the accounting function to provide the needed information for the firm to remain profitable.

***LOGIN REQUIRED*** Accounting covers accounting principles and practices, the complete accounting cycle and creation of financial reports. Use of the general journal and special journals, general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable and proper financial reporting.This course provides instruction in the basic accounting procedures used to operate a business including sole proprietorship, partnerships, and corporations. The accounting procedures presented will also serve as a sound background for employment in office jobs and preparation for further education and training. The complete accounting cycle is covered, students learn how to us generally accepted accounting principles to prepare, analyze, verify financial transactions, reports and economic information to make decisions for organizations.The course trains students in the basics of manual and computerized accounting. Students learn accounting topics including ethics, accounting principles, computing accounting, accounting terminology, job specific accounting, and clerical duties related to accounting. Students also gain real-world applications in income tax, personal finance, and stock market.

Uses annual reports of real companies to illustrate many of the accounting concepts in use in business today. Gaining an understanding of accounting terminology and concepts, however, is not enough to ensure your success. You also need to be able to find information on the Internet, analyze various business situations, work effectively as a member of a team, and communicate your ideas clearly. This text was developed to help you develop these skills.

Accounting Principles: A Business Perspective uses annual reports of real companies to illustrate many of the accounting concepts in use in business today. Gaining an understanding of accounting terminology and concepts, however, is not enough to ensure your success. You also need to be able to find information on the Internet, analyze various business situations, work effectively as a member of a team, and communicate your ideas clearly. This text was developed to help you develop these skills.

1. Accounting and its use in business decisions
2. Recording business transactions
3. Adjustments for financial reporting
4. Completing the accounting cycle
5. Accounting theory
6. Merchandising transactions
7. Measuring and reporting inventories
8. Control of cash
9. Receivables and payables
10. Property, plant, and equipment
11. Plant asset disposals, natural resources, and intangible assets
12. Stockholders' equity: Classes of capital stock
13. Corporations: Paid-in capital, retained earnings, dividends, and treasury stock
14. Stock investments
15. Long-term financing: Bonds
16. Analysis using the statement of cash flows
17. Analysis and interpretation of financial statements
18. Managerial accounting concepts/job costing
19. Process: Cost systems
20. Using accounting for quality and cost management
21. Cost-volume-profit analysis
22. Short-term decision making: Differential analysis
23. Budgeting for planning and control
24. Control through standard costs
25. Responsibility accounting: Segmental analysis
26. Capital budgeting: Long-range planning

Reviews available here: https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/accounting-principles-a-business-perspective

Accounting Principles: A Business Perspective uses annual reports of real companies to illustrate many of the accounting concepts in use in business today. Gaining an understanding of accounting terminology and concepts, however, is not enough to ensure your success. You also need to be able to find information on the Internet, analyze various business situations, work effectively as a member of a team, and communicate your ideas clearly. This text was developed to help you develop these skills.

Though accounting may seem like a dense and complex subject, this course is designed to present the accounting cycle in an accessible and logical manner. It will provide you with a solid understanding of basic accounting principles and will introduce you to financial statement analysis.

In Accounting for Managers, students learn the basic accounting principles needed to effectively make business decisions as a manager. The course begins with a review of basic math and accounting principles, ensuring students are prepared for the material that follows. Students will learn how to make financial decisions, including decisions around budgeting, financial statements, and cost and profit analysis.

Mayer, Warner, Siedel and Lieberman's Advanced Business Law and the Legal Environment is an up-to-date textbook with coverage of legal and regulatory issues that are more technical than the topics in the authors' Foundations of Business Law and the Legal Environment.

Law has different meanings as well as different functions. Philosophers have considered issues of justice and law for centuries, and several different approaches, or schools of legal thought, have emerged. In this chapter, we will look at those different meanings and approaches and will consider how social and political dynamics interact with the ideas that animate the various schools of legal thought. We will also look at typical sources of “positive law” in the United States and how some of those sources have priority over others, and we will set out some basic differences between the US legal system and other legal systems.

Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction to Law and Legal Systems
Chapter 2: Corporate Social Responsibility and Business Ethics
Chapter 3: Courts and the Legal Process
Chapter 4: Constitutional Law and US Commerce
Chapter 5: Administrative Law
Chapter 6: Criminal Law
Chapter 7: Introduction to Tort Law
Chapter 8: Introduction to Sales and Leases
Chapter 9: Title and Risk of Loss
Chapter 10: Performance and Remedies
Chapter 11: Products Liability
Chapter 12: Bailments and the Storage, Shipment, and Leasing of Goods
Chapter 13: Nature and Form of Commercial Paper
Chapter 14: Negotiation of Commercial Paper
Chapter 15: Holder in Due Course and Defenses
Chapter 16: Liability and Discharge
Chapter 17: Legal Aspects of Banking
Chapter 18: Consumer Credit Transactions
Chapter 19: Secured Transactions and Suretyship
Chapter 20: Mortgages and Nonconsensual Liens
Chapter 21: Bankruptcy
Chapter 22: Introduction to Property: Personal Property and Fixtures
Chapter 23: Intellectual Property
Chapter 24: The Nature and Regulation of Real Estate and the Environment
Chapter 25: The Transfer of Real Estate by Sale
Chapter 26: Landlord and Tenant Law
Chapter 27: Estate Planning: Wills, Estates, and Trusts
Chapter 28: Insurance

Energy policy is typically evolutionary as opposed to revolutionary. We can look to historical policies to understand how we've inherited the policies governing our energy use today. But looking backward only tells us part of the story. In the face of climate change, we need to look ahead and instead envision a more revolutionary change to our energy systems and the policies that govern them. This class takes you on that journey to energy policies past, present, and future. We look at the political realities of addressing climate change at various scales of governance and work together to craft our own ideal scenarios of what a responsible energy future will be.

This class covers the analysis and modeling of stochastic processes. Topics include measure theoretic probability, martingales, filtration, and stopping theorems, elements of large deviations theory, Brownian motion and reflected Brownian motion, stochastic integration and Ito calculus and functional limit theorems. In addition, the class will go over some applications to finance theory, insurance, queueing and inventory models.

This course draws on a wide range of perspectives to explore the roots of long term competitive advantage in unusually successful firms. Using a combination of cases, simulations, readings and, most importantly, lively discussion, the course will explore the ways in which long term advantage is built from first mover advantage, increasing returns, and unique organizational competencies. We will focus particularly on the ways in which the actions of senior management build competitive advantage over time, and on the strategic implications of understanding the roots of a firm's success.

This course provides a deep understanding of engineering systems at a level intended for research on complex engineering systems. It provides a review and extension of what is known about system architecture and complexity from a theoretical point of view while examining the origins of and recent developments in the field. The class considers how and where the theory has been applied, and uses key analytical methods proposed. Students examine the level of observational (qualitative and quantitative) understanding necessary for successful use of the theoretical framework for a specific engineering system. Case studies apply the theory and principles to engineering systems.

This half-semester course introduces and surveys a selection of cutting-edge topics in the field of real estate finance and investments. The course follows an informal ‰ŰĎseminar‰Ű format to the maximum degree possible, with students expected to take considerable initiative. Lectures and discussions led by the instructors will be supplemented by several guest speakers from the real estate investment industry, who will present perspectives on current trends and important developments in the industry.

" In analyzing fiscal issues, conventional public finance approaches focus mainly on taxation and public spending. Policymakers and practitioners rarely explore solutions by examining the fundamental problem: the failure of interested parties to act collectively to internalize the positive externalities generated by public goods. Public finance is merely one of many possible institutional arrangements for assigning the rights and responsibilities to public goods consumption. This system is currently under stress because of the financial crisis. The first part of the class will focus on collective action and its connection with local public finance. The second part will explore alternative institutional arrangements for mediating collective action problems associated with the provision of local public goods. The objective of the seminar is to broaden the discussion of local public finance by incorporating collective action problems into the discourse. This inclusion aims at exploring alternative institutional arrangements for financing local public services in the face of severe economic downturn. Applications of emerging ideas to the provision of public health, education, and natural resource conservation will be discussed."