Finance for Non Financial Managers

Course details

No-one in business will succeed if they are not financially literate – and no business will succeed without financially-literate people. This is the ideal program for managers and others who don’t have a financial qualification or background but who nonetheless need a greater understanding of the financial management disciplines essential to your organization.

Training Objectives

This course will give the participants a sound understanding of financial reports, measures and techniques to make them even more effective in their roles. It will enable participants to:

• Overcome the barrier of the accountants’ strange language
• Deal confidently with financial colleagues
• Improve their understanding of your organization’s finance function
• Radically improve their planning and budgeting skills
• Be much more aware of the impact of their decisions on the profitability of your organization
• Enhance their role in the organization
• Boost their confidence and career development

Audience

• This course is designed to be relevant to all levels of staff, and can be adjusted to suit the specific participants and, of course, the organization itself.

Course Outline

Part (1) Accounting language:

• Introducing Accounting
• What are financial statements and their meaning
• Balance sheets and P&L accounts (income statements)
• Detailed terminology and interpretation
• Working capital, equity, earning
• Where the figures come from
• Accounting records
• Assets / liabilities, Income / expenditure
• The ‘rules’ – Accounting Standards, concepts and conventions
• Fundamental accounting concepts
• Detailed accounting concepts and conventions
• Accounting policies that most affect reporting and results
• Special Accounting topics and its effect on business:
• Deprecation
• Adjustments

Part (2) How to build right financial decision:

• “Cash is the king” You will become acquainted with the statement
• Liquidity via profitability.
• Credit policies.
• What are costs? How to account for them
• Cost definitions
• Full / absorption costing
• Overheads – overhead allocation or absorption
• Activity based costing
• Marginal costing / break-even – use in planning
• Cost measurement and controlling
• Budgets and how to prepare them for the organizations goals
• Have clear objectives, remit, responsibilities and time schedule
• The business plan
• Links with corporate strategy
• The budget cycle
• Links with company culture
• Budgeting methods
• Reviewing budgets
• Responding to the figures
• How the statements can be interpreted
• What published accounts contain
• Analytical review (ratio analysis)
• Return on capital employed, margins and profitability
• Making assets work – asset turnover
• Fixed assets, debtor, stock turnover
• Responding to figures