FIN2000 – Principles of Finance is a 3-credit introduction to business finance — how organizations raise money, where they invest it, and how those decisions are evaluated. It sits at the lower division, typically in an A.S. business program or as an elective in an A.A. transfer plan, and it is the survey course that precedes the upper-division financial management sequence.
Finance rests on one idea that reorganizes everything else: a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow, because today's dollar can be invested. Every valuation technique in the course — present value, bond pricing, stock pricing, capital budgeting — is a variation on applying that principle. Students who grasp time value early find the rest of the course to be applications; students who treat each topic as a separate formula find it to be memorization.
Content covers the finance function — the goal of the firm, forms of business organization, and the agency problem; financial statements — the balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows read from a finance rather than an accounting perspective; ratio analysis — liquidity, activity, leverage, and profitability, and the DuPont decomposition; financial planning and forecasting; time value of money — future and present value, annuities, perpetuities, compounding frequency, and amortization; risk and return — measuring risk, diversification, and the risk-return relationship; valuation — bond pricing, yield, and stock valuation models; the cost of capital; capital budgeting — payback, net present value, and internal rate of return; working capital management — cash, receivables, inventory, and short-term financing; financial markets and institutions; and an introduction to international finance.
Offered at approximately 12 Florida institutions.
Florida's financial sector is concentrated in Miami (with substantial Latin American banking and trade finance), Tampa, and Jacksonville, and the state has attracted significant asset management and fintech relocation. Bilingual candidates are at a real advantage in the South Florida market.
The most consequential point for a transferring student. Florida carries introductory business finance at two levels: FIN2000 Principles of Finance at the lower division, and FIN3400/FIN3403 Financial Management at the upper division. They cover much of the same territory — time value, valuation, capital budgeting, cost of capital — but FIN3400/FIN3403 does it faster, in more depth, and as a required course in the business major.
SCNS equivalency applies to the same number at the same level, never across numbers. FIN2000 is guaranteed to transfer as FIN2000; it does not automatically satisfy a receiving university's FIN3403 requirement, and at most Florida universities it does not. A student intending a B.S. in business should expect to take the upper-division course after transferring and should treat FIN2000 as preparation and elective credit rather than as a substitute. Check the receiving institution's articulation before assuming otherwise — this is a common and expensive misunderstanding.
Some Florida institutions list no prerequisite for FIN2000 (Florida State College at Jacksonville); others require ACG2021 Financial Accounting with a grade of C or higher (Eastern Florida State College). The variation is not arbitrary — it reflects a genuine disagreement about whether the course is a survey or a technical course.
Practically: take financial accounting first even where it is not required. This course reads financial statements constantly, and a student who has never constructed one is decoding an unfamiliar document and learning finance at the same time. Comfort with algebra also matters more than students expect — not advanced mathematics, but genuine fluency with rearranging an equation and working with exponents.
The unifying insight, and the difference between a hard course and a manageable one. A bond price is the present value of its coupons and face amount. A stock price is the present value of its expected dividends. Net present value is the present value of a project's cash flows minus its cost. A loan payment is the annuity whose present value equals the amount borrowed.
Students who learn time value thoroughly — to the point of being able to draw a timeline for any problem before touching a calculator — find the rest of the semester to be substitution. Students who move on before it is solid struggle in every subsequent chapter and usually cannot tell why. Invest disproportionate effort in the time value unit; it pays for the whole course.
Most sections permit or require a financial calculator (the TI BA II Plus is standard, inexpensive, and also permitted on the CFA exams). Two pieces of practical advice: learn it in the first two weeks rather than the night before the first exam, and check your P/Y and C/Y settings — the most common source of wrong answers on exams is a calculator configured for monthly compounding on an annual problem, or a leftover value in a register.
Separately, learn the spreadsheet functions even if the course does not require them. In actual finance work almost nothing is done on a calculator; it is done in Excel. A student who leaves with fluent PV/FV/NPV/IRR spreadsheet skill has something directly demonstrable in an interview.
The idea most likely to be genuinely useful outside the classroom. A profitable business can fail by running out of cash — and frequently does, because profit is recognized when earned while cash arrives when collected. Rapid growth is the classic trap: sales rise, inventory and receivables consume cash faster than collections replace it, and a company that looks excellent on the income statement cannot make payroll. This is why the course treats the cash conversion cycle and working capital seriously, and why lenders look at cash flow statements before income statements.
Worth knowing before choosing a direction. Several finance careers require licensure that no course provides: FINRA securities registration for financial advisors (the SIE can be taken independently, but Series 7 and 66 require sponsorship by an employing firm), Florida Department of Financial Services licensure for insurance, and Florida DBPR licensure for real estate. The CFP and CFA are separate professional credentials with their own education and experience requirements. A student aiming at any of these should learn the requirements early, because they shape which employer to target first.
Generated August 31, 2026 · Updated August 31, 2026