Financial Accounting: A Review

Professor in a Box: Financial Accounting is a first accounting course designed with the homeschool high school student in mind. Aimed at future business owners, investors or employees of companies that invest in stocks or mutual funds, this program will have your student reading financial statements in no time.

As someone that has a hard time keeping her checkbook balanced, when it comes to teaching my children accounting, I’ll take all the help I can get! 

I assigned this course to my oldest son, who seems to have become the guinea pig for my recent reviews.  As excited as I was for him to get started, I did worry how he would do with a formal program since we are pretty laid back and unstructured when it comes to most subjects, math included. 

The course is a college level program for the high school age student, requiring only basic math skills. I was excited by that statement and then I realized that basic math skills are assuming that the student has completed an algebra course, which my son has not.  Nevertheless, my son was eager to begin the program. 

I quickly discovered there are many positive aspects of the Financial Accounting Program:

1. Ease of use. This is a program that is very user friendly. I was able to open the case, insert a CD in the computer and get my son started within minutes while I continued to browse the Instructor CD.
2. The entire 28 lesson program is fully contained on 4 CD’s. No textbook is required.
3. The lecture slides, which the student views,  are available as PDF’s to be easily printed if desired.
4. The instructor, Michael P. Licata, Ph.D. is very thorough and knowledgeable.
5. There are two options available for taking the course-
       A) the full College Level Course, or… 
       B)  the Short Version that will allow some of the components of the  program  to be skipped while still ensuring that the student is prepared to take the CLEP Financial  Accounting Exam.
6. The course is set up in four simple steps-
       A) watch lectures,
       B) complete the homework,
       C) check your answers,
       D) take the exams.

It really couldn’t be much simpler than that!

Personally, there were only a few minor issues that I would like to note:

1. The lessons are long. However, the beauty of home schooling is  adapting a  program to work for you and not being a slave to the program. You can adjust the lessons as needed and break them up accordingly.
2. The answers to the Chapter Problems are on the student discs while the exams and exam answers are on the Instructor CD. I‘d have preferred for all the answers to be on the Instructor CD so there is no temptation to peek at the answers. When it comes to math, mastery is key.
3. Some of the Chapter Problems require that your child use the Internet to complete some research, which may be an issue for some families. 
4. The program does utilize Excel templates, which are included, but it would be helpful if your child had a basic familiarity with Excel prior to beginning the course.

My son, who has been enjoying the course, appreciates the straightforwardness of the instructor as well as the examples he gives as each new concept is clearly introduced. Each new term and application is fully covered.  From a beginner’s point of view, my son is sometimes slightly overwhelmed by the amount of  information that is presented. This is by no means an easy course, but my son hasn’t let that deter him and is plugging right along, progressing nicely.  

You can purchase Financial Accounting directly through Professor in a Box for the current sale price of $99.95 which comes with a money back guarantee! 

Professor in a Box also sells a second course, Principles of Marketing, with a new Entrepreneurship course available in 2011.

You can read what other reviewers had to say about this product on the TOS Review Blog.

I received this product free of charge, in exchange for my honest opinion. I hope this review will help other families determine if this product would be a good fit for their own families.