Farley's Startup Accounting Course Is Designed for the Entrepreneur

The topic of accounting typically carries with it a notion of being "boring" and tedious. As practitioners (and now instructors in the world of academics), we get that. Our focus from day one is to strip away as much of the tedium and monotony associated with accounting, and provide a unique spin on how accounting fits into the life of an entrepreneur. Instead of memorizing the tax code and teaching students to churn out complex journal entries, we've sifted through the broad accounting curriculum to teach only the concepts that you'll care about most as an entrepreneur. This means you'll learn how to do basic bookkeeping, how to pay yourself and employees (in a legal, compliant manner), how to budget and forecast for your business, what taxes you have to pay, and how to prepare and interpret your financial statements, among other topics. We don't want you to become an accountant, but we want to empower you to be your own accountant.

To align the course with this ideology, the central theme has been to hammer home why these areas of accounting matter to you as an entrepreneur. As a result of this approach, 100% of our students agreed that the course better equipped them to succeed as an entrepreneur and that the instructors simulated student interest in the course. Further, each student said they would recommend the course to a peer. We believe student feedback has been positive due to our approach of applying hands on and case based learning as the primarily instruction method. Students will consistently be challenged to answer not only the "how" of each concept taught, but "why it matters." It is our philosophy that this approach is the most effective way to prepare students for the challenging and unpredictable world of entrepreneurship. We firmly believe (and now have a small sample set that have validated our hypothesis) that our class will intellectually stimulate you to view entrepreneurship through a financial lens and better equip you for success as an entrepreneur. ENTREP 395, Startup Accounting, will be available in Winter Quarter, 2017.