A two-day workshop
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 programme 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 organisation.
learning objectives
- Overcome the barrier of the accountants’ strange language
- Deal confidently with financial colleagues
- Improve their understanding of your organisation’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 organisation
- Enhance their role in the organisation
- Boost their confidence and career development
Session outline
1. Review of the principal financial statements
- What each statement contains:
- Outline
- Detail
- Not just what the statements contain but what they mean
- Balance sheets and P&L accounts (income statements)
- Cash flow statements
- Detailed terminology and interpretation
- Types of fixed asset – tangible, etc
- Working capital, equity, gearing
2. The ‘rules’ – Accounting Standards, concepts and conventions
- Fundamental or ‘bedrock’ accounting concepts
- Detailed accounting concepts and conventions
- What depreciation means
- The importance of stock, inventory and work in progress values
- Accounting policies that most affect reporting and results
- The importance of accounting standards and IFRS
3. Where the figures come from
- Accounting records
- Assets / liabilities, Income / expenditure
- General / nominal ledgers
- Need for internal controls
- ‘Sarbox’ and related issues
4. Managing the budget process
- Have clear objectives, remit, responsibilities and time schedule
- The business plan
- Links with corporate strategy
- The budget cycle
- Links with company culture
- Budgeting methods:
- ‘New’ budgeting
- Zero-based budgets
- Reviewing budgets
- Responding to the figures
- The need for appropriate accounting and reporting systems
5. 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
6. Who does what? A review of what different types of accountant do
- Financial accounting
- Management accounting
- Treasury function
- Activities and terms
7. 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
- EBIT, EBITDA, eps and other analysts’ measure
8. Other key issues
- Creative accounting
- Accounting for groups
- Intangible assets – brand names
- Fixed assets / leased assets / off-balance sheet finance
