Curious about studying Accounting (Including Placement Year) - BSc (Hons)at University of Essex? We've gathered all the key details—entry requirements, modules, fees, and more. Hear from real students by checking out reviews, or take the next step by booking an open day to explore it for yourself.
Bachelor of Science (with Honours) - BSc (Hons)
University of Essex
Full Time
Oct 2026
4 Year
What’s the difference between financial and management accounting? How can accountants help improve business for the better? Accounting informs almost all areas of business, from strategy to outsourcing and operational planning to environmental policies. At Essex Business School, accounting means more than cutting costs and managing transactions. It’s vital for ensuring accountability by encouraging sound, ethical decision making so that you can make a positive impact in the workplace. From an undergraduate accounting degree at Essex you gain a firm understanding of the financial drivers underpinning business leadership, strategy, planning, governance and ethics. You explore both financial and management accounting and use case studies to apply theory to practice, skills which will be in an increasingly high demand from employers over the coming years. You’ll gain a broad understanding of accounting and benefit from academic expertise in a range of areas, studying topics such as: - preparation and analysis of financial statements - regulation in governing accounting practice - principles of cost accumulation - financial and management accounting theory - providing information to managers to assist their decision making We ensure you gain a fully-rounded business education by introducing you to subjects such as finance, management, marketing and economics in your first year. In your second and final years, you can choose from selected optional modules to tailor the programme to your accounting career aspirations. In your final year of your accounting degree, you have the opportunity to put your knowledge into practice by completing an in-depth, independent research project or dissertation. This will give you the chance to further develop vital employability skills in areas of research, time management and critical thinking. You join an international community of students and staff, working to make organisations better places to do business.
This module introduces financial accounting and basic principles and techniques needed to analyse and interpret financial statements. Although the module is intended as an introduction for students majoring in accounting it will also benefit students who wish to gain some insight into the practices of accounting. You’ll look at the nature and role of accounting and consider who uses accounting information and for what purposes. You’ll discuss the contents of annual reports, especially the narrative sections, and the qualitative characteristics of accounting information. Finally, the module will be concerned with key elements and the format of financial statements. You’ll earn to prepare company financial statements using trial balance and cover the techniques that can be used to analyse and interpret financial statements.
This module is intended for students majoring in accounting and those who have a keen interest in gaining an understanding of elementary financial accounting. Learn the basic principles and techniques for preparing and constructing a set of comprehensive financial statements. The module commences with an introduction to double-entry booking keeping and accounting equations that govern the recording of business transactions. You’ll then discuss the recognition and measurement principles for accounting for some key items in financial statements, including inventory, accruals, prepayments, long-term assets, and long-term finance, using International Financial Reporting Standards as reference. Finally, the preparation of financial statements from the trial balance for various types of entities, incorporating a variety of simple adjustments.
Quantitative Methods and Finance is an introduction to the subject of quantitative methods and their applications in finance, accounting and management. The module is designed to provide a sound foundation for your future studies in finance, accounting or management. The topics covered include maths revision, the time value of money, rates of change (calculus), statistics, probability distributions and simple regression.
Introduction to Finance is designed to give you an introduction to the wider finance subject area ass well as firm foundation for further studies in finance. You’ll gain a overview of the financial system, instruments and markets, and ideas about finance concepts and problems. The topics covered include investment companies, return and risk, and behavioural finance. You’ll develop and be able to transmit knowledge about the financial system, instruments and markets and ideas about finance concepts and problems at an introductory level; be aware of, at an introductory level, different ways of thinking about and analysing financial phenomena; and, reflecting the principles of how we approach Finance at Essex Business School, you’ll gain an appreciation of the role that finance plays in society as whole.
Introduction to Management is a broad-ranging module intended to provide a foundation in the most significant issues in management theory and practice, as well as to prepare you for related modules in subsequent years of your course. Because theoretical explanations, i.e. academic interpretations of what managers do and even of what they say they do, and what managers actually do in real organisations on a day-to-day basis, may differ, we will also draw out some of the connections and disjunctures between management theory and management practice. Our teaching also emphasises the ethics of managing and how to balance the bottom line of the business with the organisation's wider responsibilities to society and other stakeholders. The module also looks to explore how AI is being employed by managers and how this is changing the roles and responsibilities of the managers across sectors whilst also creating new risks and challenges.
At Essex Business School we’re proud of our international community, bringing international expertise into the classroom. In this module you are introduced to the global business environment and how this impacts upon corporations and their decision to operate internationally. You explore the different strategies organisations can adopt when entering international markets and examine aspects of managing multinational corporations, such as marketing, human resource management and global supply chain management.
This is a key module across all of our accounting courses. The Professional and Academic Development (Accounting) module is a foundation in core academic skill requirements with the intention of improving the standard of your academic work across all first-year modules. This module also introduces you to the themes of career planning, employability skills, and awareness of career pathways. The primary aim of this module is to deliver a range of study skills and introduce professional development at the start of Essex Business School students' undergraduate courses.
Giving you a broad overview of economics for business, The Business Economics module provides an introductory overview of modern economics, including examples in microeconomics that have a bearing on the world of business, i.e., the organisation of firms, the economic implications of their objectives, and the markets in which they operate, and examples in macroeconomics, i.e., the global environment where firms operate. You’ll gain a basic understanding of the key ideas in economics, both in micro and in macroeconomics, and to apply these to explain contemporary issues in the news, in the business world and policymaking.
This module develops advanced financial reporting skills, focusing on the preparation and analysis of complex financial statements. You’ll gain practical experience in areas such as cash flow reporting, consolidated accounts and taxation, while exploring key topics including business combinations, investments and post-reporting events. Blending theory with real-world practice and industry insight, the module prepares you for senior professional roles in accounting and finance.
Develop the advanced financial reporting skills demanded by today’s accounting and finance professionals. This module focuses on preparing and analysing complex financial statements, covering areas such as cash flows, consolidated accounts, taxation and business combinations. By combining theory with real-world insight, it prepares you for senior professional and strategic roles in the field.
Management accounting enables you to provide three key areas of information to any business: costing, decision-making, and planning and control. In this module you focus on costing, but also see how this area overlaps with the other two, as all three areas always interact. You also develop your knowledge and understanding of management accounting and the context in which it operates.
Explore how financial theory can aid financial decision-making in corporations. You discover how to apply the value maximization principle to corporate decisions, such as investment decision, borrowing decisions, and dividend decisions.
Develop your understanding of the role of management accounting in organisational decision-making and control. You explore the uses of management accounting information in facilitating planning, control and decision making by managers.
This compulsory module equips you with effective study practices to excel in your second year at Essex Business School. It gives your guidance on how to use feedback effectively to improve and develop your academic skills and improve your performance. It provides the opportunity to create an action plan for your personal and professional development whilst at university.
This module looks to deconstruct what accounting and regulation is, and the role of international standard setters and politics in standard setting. You will look at accounting theory which forms the foundations for the approaches to accounting that are currently taken in society, we will look at the way that this forms the conceptual framework and the discuss the measurement approaches that are taken. It continues with a more in-depth look at corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting, including discussions about recent initiatives as well as academic findings. You’ll then look at fair value accounting in terms of its valuation measurements, its strengths and weaknesses in comparison with historical cost accounting and its relationship with the global financial crisis. Other issues covered are of foreign currency translation - to compare the different methods which can be used to account for it. And issues related to Off-balance Sheet accounting with a particular focus on lease contracts and the role that these tools have played in encouraging opportunistic behaviours that lead to the bankruptcy of global companies and to the recent global financial crisis. Finally, you’ll discuss the accounting treatment of goodwill and other intangible assets.
Management accounting serves the purpose of identifying, measuring and communicating economic information to permit management and workforce make informed judgements and decisions. Investigate the technical issues in cost management and performance measurement systems, and wider issues concerning the role of management accounting in shaping management structures and decisions in manufacturing and service contexts.
In this module, you evaluate contemporary developments and research in the field of management accounting, using real-life business case studies. You explore management accounting within economic, political, social and cultural contexts, exploring issues such as deregulation, globalisation and increasing customer demands. You examine strategic issues such as cost management, performance measurement and management controls and explore how organisational and technological changes are impacting the discipline both nationally and internationally.
Develop your legal knowledge by studying Partnership Law, followed by various aspects of Company Law (including professional negligence), together with the rules of Agency, Insolvency principles, the offence of Insider Dealing and Employment Law.
Placement Year
4.3
