Corporate Subject Area: Accounting
WHO SHOULD ATTEND?
- Those who are new managers or managers wanting a refresher
- Budget holders who want to create and manage their budgets more effectively
- Operations managers who want to know more about cost management and projects
- Sales and marketing employees who want to understand financial statements
- Anyone who needs to understand key accounting concepts, and improve forecasting and cost management skills
- Managers whoare about to be promoted into positions which require financial literacy
- Managers facing financial decisions or expect to make a contribution to a wider planning process
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
- Introduce fundamental bookkeeping and accounting concepts enabling them to manage the financial aspects of their role more effectively.
- Review the different approaches taken in the public and private sector
- Make sense of key financial statements and some key ratios
- Enable participants to manage financial aspects of projects more effectively
- Assist you to put together a budget which will enable you to justify expected expenditure
- Enable you to measure budgetary performance
- Provide skills to enable you to conduct effective investment appraisals
COURSE CURRICULUM
- Bookkeeping versus accounting
- Cash accounting versus accrual accounting and use in private and public sectors
- Types of accounts in the General Ledger, their purpose and the chart of accounts
- Double-entry bookkeeping concepts and implications
- Depreciation and amortisation
- International standards in the private and public sectors, IFRS and IPSAS
- Format and content of the statement of financial position (balance sheet)
- Format and content of the statement of profit or loss
- IPSAS principles of financial statements presentation for the public sector
- Investor ratios
- Financial accounting and management accounting compared
- Types of management information prepared for internal consumption
- Financial information managers need to manage – the power of comparisons
- Analysing costs, key ratio calculations for management and variance analysis, including ROE, ROA and liquidity ratios
- Financial aspects of building the business case and getting approval for funding
- Estimating project costs – different estimating techniques, expert, analogous, parametric, bottom up etc.
- Project forecasts, cost variances and cost control
- Project risks and financial implications
- Public sector v. Private sector budgeting differences in purpose, processes and motive.
- Budgetary methodologies, incremental and zero-based
- Budget and variance analysis
- End of week quiz to appraise learning achieved
- The income statement (P & L) statement, format, content and key concepts
- Interpretation of key ratios derived from the income statement; P/E ratio, Profit margin
- The language and major components of the balance sheet
- Business ratios derived from the balance sheet and P & L together, liquidity, debt, profitability etc.
- Defining the value generated and the required return – the hurdle rate
- Return on capital employed – calculation methodology and interpretation
- Payback period calculations
- NPV and IRR calculations
- Non-financial aspects of investment appraisal and decision making
- Purpose and benefits, problems and limitations of capital and operational budgets and the important differences
- Budget processes in the private sector
- Budget processes in the public sector
- Identification of risks to the budget and actions to mitigate them
- What is financial performance?
- Financial performance in the public sector
- The importance of cash flow – how to measure and improve it
- Gross profit, operating profit, net profit margin
- Key investor ratios