<p>What would be the most beneficial accounting classes to take as a finance major? Looking for 1-3 classes. Cost accounting? Tax accounting? etc. </p>
<p>Does your school have a flowchart or recommended path for finance majors? Generally, cost accounting is only necessary for accountants. Tax accounting is very useful for finance majors, sometimes it’s even a required course. Some sort of financial reporting class is also useful. Finance guys should be able to analyze and interpret financial reports.</p>
<p>Take Intermediate Accounting and Taxes. Intermediate covers about 95% of what you will need to know about financial statements. And as Ben Franklin said “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”, so it is never a bad idea to have tax knowledge.</p>
<p>Thanks, helpful info! Geo, I am taking Intermediate right now and plan on taking Tax Accounting next semester so glad it’ll be helpful. </p>
<p>Well, seeing as though Accounting is technically a sub-section of Finance, you should focus on ALL Accounting related courses to go along with your Finance courses if they aren’t required. I would do a major in Finance and minor in Accounting, or if you plan on going after something such as the CPA or CMA, I would major in Accounting and minor in Finance. </p>
<p>But Accounting in general includes your Tax Accounting, Managerial Accounting and Financial Accounting. Tax Accounting is all about how can we structure our finances and business in a way to pay as little tax as possible to the IRS? Financial Accounting is all about how can we structure our finances and business in a way to raise as much money as possible from external investors? Managerial Accounting is getting down to the “nitty gritty” to have a holistic view of the current standing of the company to determine what’s the best moves to make going forward. Auditing isn’t Financial Accounting, but it’s birth out of Financial Accounting, where once the company’s CFO puts together their financial statements for external investors, they need them audited by an external team to verify the accuracy, that’s where Auditing comes in. You also have Forensic Accounting, where you have cases of fraud and you bring in Forensic Accountants to audit statements and conduct analyses to determine how the fraud occurred. </p>
<p>So I would major in Finance and minor in Accounting, because if you are going to work in Finance you really can’t “escape” the need to have some basic knowledge on Financial, Managerial and Tax Accounting. </p>
<p>@jotucker awesome, thanks! I took both financial and managerial accounting, and plan on taking tax accounting as well. As a Finance major, I hope these courses give me even a small advantage when searching for jobs. </p>