Why are accounting and finance important disciplines? Accounting and finance are tools used to manage organizations, measure performance, and communicate with an organization’s lenders, funders, investors, regulators, customers, employees, and other stakeholders. This course is designed to provide a basic introduction and to give you a kick-start for any other accounting for finance courses you might consider taking. Do you want to learn more about accounting and finance, or are required or strongly encouraged, as part of your program, to take courses such as Financial Analysis for Nonprofits, Elements of Finance, Capital Markets and Investing for Impact, Infrastructure Finance and Design, Food Policy and Agribusiness Finance, or the Community Development Finance Lab Course? Are your career aspirations to advocate for social, environmental, and policy changes? Having an understanding of financial statements, essentials of balance sheets, income statements, cash-flow statements, and how different enterprises (including for-profit, non-profit, and public/private sector) raise capital and finance operations are important and hard skills. Notwithstanding, are you hesitant to take any of these courses because you have limited or no accounting or finance in your background? This course is a comprehensive investigation into key areas in accounting and finance and designed for students who may benefit from pre-study before taking any of the aforementioned courses. It is not designed to substitute for any of the above course or to be a freestanding accounting or finance course, but it will prepare you to hit the ground running in any of the above courses.