Upon completion of the course participants will be able to:

• Understand financial terminology of finance and accountancy
• Understand cashflow and key factors affecting cashflow
• Read and interpret financial reports
• Use ratio analysis to track performance
• Costing and price for profit, sustainability and growth
• Use company financial information to manage your day to day operations
• Improve financial management capability
• Gain greater control of their relationships with external financiers, accountants and their own internal management team
• Ascertain what they need to do to enable their business to grow profitably

Outline Content:  2 Modules delivered over 1 day (6 hours face to face training group)

 Module 1 : Financial Management

• Why is financial management important for your business?
• Key aspects to effective financial management
• Busting financial jargon
• Different types of accounting and accounting professionals
• Financial Statements explained:
  • Balance Sheet: Investment and financing cycle  - the balance sheet includes definitions of asset, liabilities, debtors, creditors
  • Profit and Loss Account: The trading cycle - the trading, profit and loss account
  • Cashflow Statement
• Capital versus revenue expenses – how we treat them differently and how they are treated by the Revenue and how they affect “profit”
• Concepts underlying the financial statements
• Maximising profit – key elements to improve the “bottom line”
• Difference between profit and cash
• Key ratios for financial management – gross and net profit margins, ROCE, debtor days
• Reading financial reports for your business
• Snapshot Reporting and using it in your business – key figures to monitor – Draft snapshot report for your business using KPI’s for performance monitoring
• Define breakeven – homework for purpose of doing breakeven analysis
• Estimating breakeven and assessing viability
• Using breakeven to establish goals and set targets

Module 2 – Budgeting, Costing, Pricing, and Cashflow Management

Budgeting, Costing and Pricing

• Why budgets are important and what role we play within the budgeting  process?
• Managing costs and different types of costs, (direct, indirect, overheads, fixed, variable)
• Absorb overheads to individual jobs/products
• Calculating your product/service cost
• Time management and costs including using time sheets and time management systems
• Establishing costing  procedures
• Pricing to cover costs and remain competitive in the market
• Cost plus pricing - calculating the job/product price
• Mark – up versus Margin
• Key pricing strategies to maximise profit, stability and growth
• Monitoring price performance

Cashflow Management

• identifying cashflow problems early
• dealing with same internally
• deciding to source funds

• raising capital – sources of funding and assistance

NOTE: programme can be flexible to meet trainee needs based on results from pre training questionnaire, the financial health check or feedback from trainees