Mastering Budgeting, Planning and Finance for Non-Finance Professionals Course

This course transforms financial and accounting concepts into decision making tools you can use successfully every day. You will learn to apply the fundamentals of finance to improve budget management, increase potential profits, and assess the financial performance of business activities

Day one

• The key financial statements
• Understanding the accounting cycle
• The five main accounts in financial statements
• Income statement: tool for performance measurement
• Accrual basis versus cash basis
• Balance sheet: tool for financial position
• The balanced status
• Statement of owners’ equity
• Statement of cash flows: cash is king
• Working capital management
• Wrapping-up: the cycle of financial statements
• External and internal auditors’ responsibilities

Day Two

• Analysis of financial statements
• Why are ratios useful
• Horizontal and trend analysis
• Vertical analysis: common size statements
• Common size financial statements
• Building blocks analysis and reading through the numbers:
• Liquidity ratios: ability to settle short-term dues
• Solvency ratios: ability to settle long-term dues
• Activity ratios: ability to manage assets efficiently
• Profitability ratios
• Limitations of financial ratio analysis
• Operating budget process and techniques

Day three

• What is an operating budget?
• Steps to budget development
• Master budget components
• Sales forecasting
• Approaches to budgeting
• Incremental budgeting
• Zero-based budgeting
• Budgetary control and correction

Day Four

• Capital budgeting: the investing decisions
• Examples of exercises involving capital budgeting exercise
• Time value of money: a prerequisite for investing decisions
• Required rate of return for investments
• Examples of cash outflows for capital projects
• Examples of cash inflows for projects
• Net present value calculation
• Internal rate of return