This course sits within our Accounting & Finance framework, consisting of a range of specialised courses:
- BA (Hons) Accounting
- BA (Hons) Finance
- BA (Hons) Accounting & Finance
- MAccFinn (Hons) Accounting & Finance
Each of the courses in this framework will give you those vital core skills, as well as offering more specialist options depending on the pathway you choose to pursue. All courses' first year units are the same, allowing you the flexibility to transfer to another pathway at the end of the first year if you wish. This keeps your career options open and enables you to make more informed choices.
Foundation Year
Core Units:
- Fundamentals of Business & Management: This unit aims to develop your understanding of the business context across industry and sectors globally. You will cover the key issues and challenges facing businesses going forward and the essential role of people in dynamic, resilient and complex organisations. You will explore key functional business areas including marketing, finance, accounting, economics, people management, and organisational behaviour.
- Academic & Professional Practice: You will build your confidence in both academic and professional skills. This unit will cover the academic skills which will be required at degree level study and you’ll practice them throughout the unit with support from key university services including the library and study skills team. There will also be opportunity for you to reflect on and develop your own professional skills through interactions with employers, careers services and online resources.
- Fusion Business Project: You will undertake a business project based on a real issue or problem. The Fundamentals of Business & Management unit will support you in understanding key issues and challenges which could form the basis for your project. Projects will be undertaken in workplaces, community settings or part of research processes related to your chosen field of study. You will be allocated an academic mentor who will support you in developing and undertaking the project.
Year 1
Our particular focus in the first year is to ensure that you understand diverse areas like law, economics, accounting, business management, quantitative analysis and finance in the context of how a business is run, thus focusing on the connectivity between these areas in the world of business.
Core units:
- Law for Accounting & Finance: You will study the aspects of Law required to operate in the finance sector. You will acquire knowledge of the sources of law in order to understand the potential impacts each source may have on financial practice.
- Economics for Accounting & Finance: You understand the fundamental economic concepts and their applications including the way markets work and their interaction using real-world examples, as well as the impact of economic policies on businesses and society.
- Introduction to Accounting: This unit will give you a solid foundation in the fundamentals of accounting, together with a basic understanding of the regulatory framework. You will be able to prepare financial statements and use a range of management accounting techniques to aid the business decision-making process.
- Quantitative Analysis: This unit will develop your understanding of basic mathematical principles and how they are applied in accounting and finance. It will provide you with the essential techniques used to collect, present, analyse and interpret data and show how quantitative methods may be used to provide reliable management information.
- Introduction to Financial Markets: As an introduction to financial markets, you will gain a level of conceptual understanding that will allow you to critically evaluate the fundamentals of finance and its implications in the current scenario.
- Business Context: This unit will equip you with the understanding of how to translate knowledge in economics, law, statistics, finance, accounting in a business context.
Year 2
The second-year emphasises on embedding subject related skills like a working knowledge of accounting software and excel skills whilst also ensuring that you learn softer skills such as presentation skills, assessment centre practice and CV building experience. The aim is to ensure that you are ready to successfully engage with the placement recruitment process.
Core units:
- Management Accounting: You will develop an understanding of basic management account concepts, techniques and practices and the quantitative skills to apply them in an organisational context.
- Business Tax Planning: ‘The bottom line’ is perhaps the key figure in a set of accounts. It is arrived at after deducting taxation and therefore an appreciation of the impact of taxation on business decisions is an important component in any degree in accountancy and related subjects. This unit will cover the UK taxation system as it impacts upon business decision making.
- Financial Reporting: You will evaluate and apply the regulatory framework of accounting, prepare basic consolidated accounts in accordance with IFRS, for a simple group and analyse and appraise company performance.
- Audit & Control: The unit will give you an insight into the modern audit process. The main emphasis will be on the statutory audit process, although the work of internal audit will also be considered.
- Accounting Information Systems: You will progress and enhance your IT skills through the use and application of industry-standard software. The unit will also provide an understanding of the accounting profession and put the use of such software into context. You will learn how to apply business process thinking in SAP ERP Information systems as tools within financial and management accounting.
- Corporate Financial Management: This unit presents and discusses the importance of financial management to a corporate entity based on the relevant theories. It analyses the business environment in which the financial management decisions are taken both in the short-run and also in the long-run. Further, it demonstrates how capital and risk are linked to financial management and applies key principles, techniques, tools, and instruments to assist in corporate decision-making.
Placement year
You may choose to complete an optional (minimum) 30-week work placement which can be carried out anywhere in the world. The placement year offers a chance to gain experience and make contacts for the future.
Final year
The final year will emphasise on embedding research skills, which will ensure that you are able to apply this important transferable skills to your graduate role. We achieve this by exposing you to the impactful research conducted by our senior academics and professors in the department, therefore enriching your grounding in different methods of research. This will then be applied in either a research study context or to the study of a live company, thus ensuring that you can demonstrate research application.
Core units:
- Advanced Accounting Theory & Practice: You will develop an understanding of the theoretical aspects of financial reporting and apply this to technical issues.
- Contemporary Issues in Accounting & Finance Research: You will develop an appreciation for current research in accounting and finance and become equipped with a broad range of research skills. Key topics will include hypothesis formation; ethical procedures; questionnaire designs; and quantitative and qualitative methodologies.
- Perspectives on Business Strategy: This unit gives you insights into the differing perspectives used to develop and implement business strategy. From its roots in finance and economics, the field of strategy has developed its own language, tools, models and methodologies, which are used throughout businesses and other organisations in many parts of the world. This unit introduces you to that language and gives you experience working with the toolkit and understanding its limitations.
Option units (choose two):
- Advanced Management Accounting: This unit will cover the role of management accounting in all aspects of management control systems, particularly in the development and use of performance management systems and the strategic control of organisations.
- Company Study: You will undertake a project and apply accounting theory to a real example as well as develop your personal skills working within a group such as time management, work-allocation, joint problem-solving, discussion, communication, negotiation, and presentation.
- Business Taxation: The unit will cover the effects of taxation in the various stages in the expansion of a business, from sole trader to corporate group and provide you with a thorough understanding of the tax regime faced by businesses in their most common forms and of the more common tax planning strategies that may be adopted.
- Financial Regulation: The unit will cover the key regulatory theories, forms and rationale of regulation that are highly relevant to those seeking employment within the financial sector. You will engage with, develop and critically analyse regulatory concepts and systems that meet the needs of both the regulator and the regulated.
- Corporate Social Responsibility & Environmental Reporting: This unit will equip you with the ability to account and report on environmental topics with emphasis on both regulatory as well as the reporting framework needed to account for environmental issues. You will gain the ability to critically appraise the usefulness of such information.
- International Taxation: The rise of the multinational company has been one of the outstanding features in business history since the 1960s. It is no longer enough for a tax specialist to possess an understanding of a single country’s tax system: knowledge of the business opportunities and business risk entailed in cross-border trading and of the measures commonly taken by countries to protect their jurisdiction to tax are now essential. The unit will exam the issues in international taxation faced by multinational corporations and individuals.
- Research Study: The research study will allow you to enhance your independent learning, critical thinking and reflective skills. It will enable you to demonstrate your ability to formulate a research proposal, collect, analyse and evaluate data pertinent to the chosen contextualised research topic and to write up a report documenting the project methodology, management and outcomes.
Please note that option units require minimum numbers in order to run and may only be available on a semester by semester basis. They may also change from year to year.
Programme specification
Programme specifications provide definitive records of the university's taught degrees in line with Quality Assurance Agency requirements. Every taught course leading to a BU Award has a programme specification which describes its aims, structure, content and learning outcomes, plus the teaching, learning and assessment methods used.
Whilst every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of the programme specification, the information is liable to change to take advantage of exciting new approaches to teaching and learning as well as developments in industry. If you have been unable to locate the programme specification for the course you are interested in, it will be available as soon as the latest version is ready. Alternatively please contact us for assistance.
