How essential are accounting courses for a CFA® ®

It'll definitely help with some of the accounting aspects and i always liked how the few acctg classes i took tied in BS->IS->CFS but its something you probably learn in the CFA books anyway (cant speak from experience there as am not planning on CFA in the near future).

delete... misread

take intermediate 1&2...you do not want to be teaching yourself accounting in any point in your life.

Agreed with the above statements. I just took level 2 and had to teach myself a decent amount of the content (e.g. pension accounting). I had taken financial accounting and managerial accounting in school but intermediate accounting probably would have helped. With that said, it is certainly possible to learn the CFA FSA content without a strong accounting background. You don't need to worry about the technical details (i.e. where to debit and credit)- instead it is how to adjust the statements you are given so you can do an effective analysis of the company.

Is managerial accounting a part of the CFA curriculum?

Managerial accounting (cost accounting) is not a part of the CFA lvl 1 curriculum, but cost accounting lays a good foundation for more advanced accounting courses like Intermediate, which IS a part of the CFA curriculum. Financial accounting and managerial accounting are very basic and straightforward.

If you take Intermediate 1&2 then the financial statement analysis (FSA) part of the CFA curriculum will be a breeze. Most people who don't have an accounting background find the FSA section the hardest, and the people who fail often fail because they couldn't grasp this section fully.

Although you are not required to know the technicals (debits/credits) you will surely find Int Acct very helpful. I'm in fact studying FSA right now and I'm finding it very easy, it's mostly because in my current role I do a lot of financial statement analysis but also cause I took a lot away from my intermediate courses.

Conclusion: just take it and get over it. Like oldmansacks said, you don't want to teach yourself accounting down the line. It's boring as shit.

I'll pile on with everybody else on this and recommend taking the course. A lot of the material will be directly appliable to CFA levels 1 and 2. Also, depending on what career you want to pursue, it may be helpful there too. In banking/PE, sooner or later you're going to run into a modeling scenario where there's equity method investments, deferred taxes, etc. If you understand the accounting, those items are easy to build in and sound intelligent talking about.

I have a similar question. I'm a senior in college and thinking of taking CFA soon. I've taken financial accounting up to advanced as well as financial statement analysis.

Now I'm debating whether to take Managerial Accounting or Financial Reporting for Complex Transactions. The latter course discusses several accounting issues such as IPOs, mergers and acquisitions, divestures, control and variable interest entities, bankruptcy, etc. as well as other industry specific accounting and financial reporting issues.

I want to know which course will better prepare me for the CFA and a career as an equity analyst. Please let me know what you guys think.

Many thanks, Cesar

Non-essential but helpful. Very very helpful. You're going to be looking at financial statements all day, you want to be comfortable with them.

I don't think there's really a need to go beyond basic financial accounting though. One semester should be fine.

How easy is it to pass the CFA level 1 if you finish a business program at a school? Is the information all very general? My schools bus program consists of required courses such as fin accting/ intro finance/ marketing/ IT/ mangrl accting/ bus ethics/ organizational bus/ strategic analysis/ decision analysis/ management/ ops management and 5 or so other upper div business courses...

If I can pass the CFA level 1 with minimal studying, I think it will probably be worth it