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.
- 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
Expert trainer
Ralph is, unusually, dual-qualified as both an engineer and a chartered accountant. Having worked initially as an engineer, he qualified as an accountant and was a manager in one of the big international accountancy firms before setting up his own accountancy and consultancy practice. His clients include many international businesses from the banking, power, telecom, oil, manufacturing, engineering, construction and retail sectors.
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
