Finance for Non-financial Managers

Course details

Details

This practical two-day course will help managers develop their financial understanding, understand how their decisions affect an organisation’s financial performance and improve their organisation’s financial performance. 

We will demystify the jargon, explore key ratios, and examine key trends and areas for concern. Then we change the emphasis to identifying the future key issues, and threats and opportunities and how to plan and budget for them.

Run as it features here, or run in-house where the content can be tailored to suit your organisational needs; cost effective if a number of people require training

Course Tutors

Mr David Rees

David Rees  MBA,  Chartered MCIPD,  Fellow of the CMI David worked for 20 years in management roles ranging from team leader through to Senior management before setting up his own training and management consultancy in 1992. Since then he has worked with a wide variety of organisations in the UK, Europe and the Middle East. His clients range from consultants to manufacturing, financial services to pharmaceutical companies, and charities to government agencies. He regularly works with managers and staff in a wide range of organisations to deliver training to all levels. His extensive training experience ranges from public sector organisations to commercial businesses, from the very large to the very small. David obtained his MBA in 1992, is a Chartered Member of the CIPD and a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute.

Who is it for

Finance for Non-financial Managers is a two-day course for managers who want to develop their financial understanding, understand how their decisions affect an organisation’s financial performance and improve their organisation’s financial performance. Whether you’re a new manager or an existing manager wanting a refresher this workshop will be useful. Relevant to public, private and not-for-profit sectors.

Benefits

By the end of the Finance for Non-financial Managers course the participants will:

• understand and analyse Balance Sheets and Income & Expenditure Accounts for key issues and financial Strengths and Weaknesses
• understand the importance and relevance of financial principles such as Expected Return and Return on Investment (amongst others)
• analyse, understand and manage their own Income and Expenditure accounts more effectively
• understand the importance of Cashflow and Cash management
• use internal Management Accounts to monitor and improve performance against Budget
• recognise areas of concern and recommend ideas for improving financial performance and productivity
• contribute more effectively to Budgeting negotiations
• recognise at least 3 different methods of preparing Operating budgets, and the strengths and weaknesses of each method
• feel much more confident about their understanding of financial terms and jargon

Programme

PLEASE NOTE: You’ll need to bring along a calculator. Extensive use is made of case studies to consider key concepts if possible your own organisation’s figures/examples can also be considered.

Tutor support will be available to you after the course via email. 

Sessions Outline

Course objectives

• Introductions and course objectives
• Participants’ own needs and wants from the course
• An overview of financial principles such as Return on Investment and Resource Allocation

The Balance Sheet 

• Understanding different Assets and Liabilities
• About Fixed Assets
• Current Assets – what they are and how to improve
• Current Liabilities – what they are and how to improve them
• Benchmarking and comparators
• Key Ratios and trends
• About Gearing

The Income and Expenditure Account (or Profit and Loss Account) 

• The key components of the Income and Expenditure Account
• Analysing Key ratios and trends
• Managing different types of Costs and their behaviour
• Analysing income streams
• Improving Profitability and Productivity
• The Power of 1%
• Benchmarking and comparators
• Profit/Surplus and Cashflow are different things!

Management Accounts

• What Management Accounts should tell us
• How these figures contribute to overall performance
• Managing the cashflow as well as the costs
• Managing variances and making any necessary improvement

Using ratios to benchmark our performance 

• How to use the key ratios to benchmark our performance
• Recognising areas where performance is slipping and which need management attention

Generating ideas to improve financial performance, including people’s productivity

• Identifying and investing more in high performing assets and activities
• Identifying and improving underperforming assets and costs

Moving from Analysis to Forecasting 

• The principles of Forecasting and Budgeting
• Revenue Budgets

             - The strengths and problems of traditional budgeting methods

             - 2 other approaches which can complement and improve traditional budgeting methods

• Budgeting for Projects – how to do a Cost-Benefit Analysis
• Capital expenditure

             - Cost of Capital issues and the time value of money

• Where budgeting can go wrong and how to avoid the principal problems

Understanding the jargon

• A free discussion clarifying any remaining questions about terminology and jargon

Action planning

• What does this all mean for my organisation and my team?
• What areas do we need to work on?
• Action plans for when I get back to work