Course Aims

To take the fear out of financial documents and help you to understand what the figures mean.  This will enable more informed decision making, better budget management and planning.

The skills participants will develop will be to

Understand Profit & Loss Accounts

The Trading Account

The Balance Sheet

Assets & Liabilities

Cashflow

Fixed & Variable Cost

Break even analysis

Using IT to produce results

Use of key financial ratios to assess business performance

The course is for

Anyone who needs a clearer understanding of basic business finance and how this benefits decision making and money management.   This course will help you to understand this core competency of business and will help you to explain financial matters related to your projects, in a confident and accurate manner.

Topics covered

The financial year, calendar year & VAT year

The Trading Account; Gross Profit & Stock, layout and creating the account

The Profit & Loss Account, Expenses, Net Profit, layout and creating the account

Debtors, depreciation and its calculation

The Balance Sheet; layout, assets & liabilities

Trial Balance

The purpose of budgets, and cashflow

Cash in-flow & cash out-flow

Consequences of poor cashflow

Budgetary control and setting budgets

Using accounting information  to find break even

Interpreting accounts for profitability using ROCE, GPM, NPM, Working capital, stock turnover, Gearing & Acid Ratio

The benefits

This course will help you to understand finance from a managers view not an accountants.  It will help you to understand financial management information and be able to use it  in the analysis, process and control of finance.  The monitoring and control will support the achievement of objectives, enable decisions and sensible financial planning for future projects.

Course duration 1 day