Running head: MOL 525E COURSE ANALYSIS SUMMARY

MOL 525E Course Analysis Summary

Medaille College
Lorraine Sennett

Author Note
This paper was prepared on 2/24/2015 for MOL 525E taught by Professor Sean Quinn.

MOL 525E COURSE ANALYSIS SUMMARY

The course on finance for leaders has been the most challenging course thus far in
my graduate work. To have a basic understanding of financial concepts and applications is
important to being able to effectively lead any organization or business. I found the work to be
challenging but overall rewarding and informative with real life applications being made not
only to my professional experiences but personal as well. In this analysis I hope to convey the
level of competence in finances that is expected. I feel that I have achieved this in the various
areas that were offered throughout this course.
During the first few weeks I was feeling confident feeling comfortable with
terminology that I had been introduced to as a senior in high school in accounting class. The
different forms of business organizations (sole proprietorship, partnership, and corporation) were
seemingly simple. The financial activities of a business organization (credit, liability, and
stockholders equity) were also grasped easily in concept. The four basic financial statements
(balance sheet, income statement, statement of retained earnings, and statement of cash flows)
are the fundamental tools of any businesses financial record keeping and important for any leader
to have knowledge of in terms of the financial health of the organization. Learning the steps of
the accounting cycle (analyze transactions, journal transactions, post to the ledger, prepare a trial
balance, adjust the accounts, prepare financial statements, and closing the accounts) was helpful
to understand the process of how finances are organized and balanced. I can see how leaders
will fail if they do not pay attention to this area even with great vision related to program
development. By having to complete journal entries for different transactions, I was able to gain
more insight into the process of accrual and cash basis accounting. The key elements of accrual
accounting are time-period assumption, the matching principle, and revenue recognition. This
was something that took some time to grasp.

MOL 525E COURSE ANALYSIS SUMMARY

One of the most challenging portions of this course for me was learning how to use
ratio analysis and the impact on the companys financial status. The research for the group
project was difficult but helpful to have to look at the comparison of different companies gaining
familiarity with how to read numbers. I have learned the importance of ratio analysis with
regard to liquidity, activity, debt, profitability, and the market. In order to invest in a company a
person must need to know if it is profitable or not. Also, we as leaders need to be able to
interpret financial information to be able to make adjustments in different areas of the company
to make it profitable. Having internal controls in a company is imperative to monitor for
situations such as fraud, especially in small business. Unfortunately, not everyone abides by
their professional or personal ethics and managers or other personnel placed in charge of
finances have embezzled money from organizations. A set of internal controls will reduce this
such as controlling the environment and having a risk assessment. There are control activities
such as not having one person in charge of all finances, (i.e.: one person counts money with
another making deposit) to ensure that no one person is responsible for all transactions. The
monitoring of situations is also important such as another person having to sign off on the
deposit or an accountant balancing the books monthly with financial reports being recorded. It
was so fascinating to watch the video on Bernie Madoff and how he pulled of the Ponzi scheme
for so long. The ability to use feeders as he did and gain peoples trust but yet be so deceiving is
unthinkable yet he did it.
Valuing stocks was something fun and interesting as I found myself thinking more
about my own investments and feeling more informed and confident with my own situations.
This can translate into my abilities as a leader feeling more confident with knowledge of how a
company and what common stock is vs. preferred stock. The trading and exchange that occurs in

MOL 525E COURSE ANALYSIS SUMMARY

primary and secondary markets can be quite confusing and complex. The basics of how trading
occurs is something that I feel comfortable with. I enjoyed learning about the time value of
money (future value, present value of a lump sum, future value of cash flow streams, and present
value of cash flow streams) but found the computations to be challenging. I found myself
making reference to shows like Shark Tank and Restaurant Start up and being able to better
follow the financial language. This gives more ability as a leader and investor to ensure that the
reward may be worth the risk. This also gave more insight into how to calculate the future value
of annuities and other types of investments. I feel this is something that companies also use to
be able to put together incentive packages such as early retirement to people.
I have a better understanding of capital budgeting, and the different methods used to
calculate returns on investments (payback method including discounted payback, net present
value, and internal rate of return). The most valuable of these three methods appears to be using
net present value but the payback method can often still be used due to being the easiest. The
knowledge gained of product and services costs (direct, indirect, and manufacturing overhead) is
helpful and will often reveal hidden costs that may not be considered. An entrepreneur will find
this valuable when starting a business as well as being able to calculate and know the break-even
point of the business. Again having to perform calculations to obtain numbers such as how many
units it would take to achieve the break-even point was helpful to understand the process.
The information on budgeting and the process of planning and having control and
monitoring of budgets was something that I was familiar with. Having realistic standards,
controllability of costs, participative budgeting, and allowing for feedback are things that can be
used as part of a budgeting and important as the budget is one of the main sources used for
performance evaluation of managers.

MOL 525E COURSE ANALYSIS SUMMARY

I find that I will be most involved with small budgets as I pursue advancement in
my career seeking a leadership positon. The understanding of the accounting process and the
financial statements used are basic tools in finance that can be useful to ensure accuracy and
identify trends departmentally allowing for more informed decisions based on the whole picture.
As a manager I would want to be aware of how emotions can impact decisions striving to be
empathic as a leader while adhering to a professional and personal ethics. I would want to
ensure that internal controls were put into place and having monitoring in place. This course has
taught the value of money and the importance as a leader to have an understanding of how it
impacts an organization.

MOL 525E COURSE ANALYSIS SUMMARY

References
Rich, J, Jones, J., Mowen, M., Hansen, D., Meggingson, W. L., Smart, S. B., Heitger, D. L.
(2012). Finance for Leaders. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.