Essential Finance Skills

The relevance & importance of accounting & finance to the success of your business

How to read and interpret financial statements

Effective budgeting and costing techniques & how to apply them.

The techniques available to determine the most profitable & worthwhile investments for your business

Effective ways to control the financial risks of your business

Description

Becoming a manager brings many new challenges and perhaps one of the largest is understanding financial issues.  You may be expected to communicate the organisation’s financial performance to your team, to contribute to discussions about how to respond to it, to plan and work to a budget and maybe even to present a business case for investment.

This workshop offers insights into the main factors that are essential to the successful financial management of any business.  In an uncertain economic environment, managers need to be aware of the power and importance of key stakeholders – shareholders, bankers, customers and suppliers.

What are the Goals?

By attending this workshop, you will acquire the following skills:

  • Identify the relationships between, financial statements (income statement, balance sheet, and statement of cash flows)
  • Recognise the key measures in managing financial performance
  • Utilise financial statements to evaluate the financial / strategic performance of an organisation
  • Apply the correct tools to evaluate future investment opportunities
  • Manage the funding of the business in the most efficient and effective manner
  • Recognise the part financial management plays in the overall business strategy

Who is this Workshop for?

This workshop is suitable to a wide range of professionals but will greatly benefit:

  • Executives
  • Group leaders
  • Project managers
  • Program managers
  • Department heads
  • Others who wish to develop a financial toolkit to complement their existing professional or technical skills.

How will this Workshop be Presented?

This workshop combines theory and practice.  We use company examples to illustrate how the techniques presented have been applied in real case studies.  The purpose is to use a mix of proven learning techniques to ensure maximum understanding, comprehension and retention of the information presented.

Day One

  • Understanding the language of finance
  • Financial versus Management Accounting
  • The financial statements – what they are and what they tell us
  • Cash versus Profit – where does the money go?
  • Financial analysis – how well are we doing?
  • Ratio analysis – easy tools to understand business performance.

Day Two

  • Managing costs – how do different types of costs behave and how do they impact profitability?
  • Cost / volume / profit (CVP) and break-even analysis
  • Closure decisions – understanding the implications
  • Understanding prices – what does it mean to be sensitive to volumes or costs?
  • Budgets and control – building the budget from scratch!
  • Evaluating capital budgets using “Time Value of Money” concepts

Learn more...