Fundamentals of Finance & Accounting

Introduction:

Financial skills and knowledge are necessary for all managers in all organizations. A more challenging business and economic climate and an increase in financial delegation is making this even more so.

Many senior professionals miss formal training in finance and often feel uncomfortable when discussing financial matters with their peers and financial professionals. This interactive and engaging program addresses these important issues.

Targeted Groups:

• All Staff with Financial Responsibility
• Finance Professionals who might benefit from a refresher
• Those involved in Business Decision-Making
• Managers anticipating Career Development
• Strategy and Planning Professionals
• Corporate Communication and Investor Relations Professionals
• Employees who want to gain great knowledge to improve their career

Conference Objectives:

At the end of this conference the participants will be able to:

• Read and interpret financial statements
• Analyze business performance
• Contribute to cash and working capital management
• Build budgets and Manage costs and budgets
• Present business cases and utilize financing techniques to improve decision making
• Understand the basic concepts of finance as it relates to their businesses
• Interpret their organizations financial signals
• Think and speak the language of finance
• Read and understand balance sheets and profit-and-loss statements
• Understand how to control and manage a companies cash flow

Targeted Competencies:

• Understanding financial statements
• Financial analysis
• Working capital management
• Preparing operating budgets
• Making capital budget decisions
• Financial decision making

Conference Content:
Unit 1: The Basics:

• Accounting Terminology and Policies
• Accounting as an information system
• The accounting equation- what does it mean
• Generally accepted Accounting Principles
• Differentiating between cash and accrual basis accounting
• Basic cash flow statements
• Walking through an Annual Report
• The annual report package
• The role of external auditor
• The accountant’s report and auditor’s opinion

Unit 2: How To Interpret Accounts and Financial Statement Analysis:

• Preparing income statement & balance sheet
• Financial and liquidity ratios
• The cash conversion cycle
• Working capital management
• Profitability and gearing ratios
• Du Pont Formula
• Financial & Non-financial analysis
• Credit analysis
• Z- Scores and credit ratings
• Bank lending decisions

Unit 3: Planning for Profit:

• Understanding and working with costs
• Plan for cost reduction and profit improvement
• Fixed and variable costs income statement
• Break-even analysis
• Contribution margin
• Costing approaches – Full Absorption, Marginal, ABC
• Standard Costing
• New ideas in cost management – lean principles

Unit 4: Budgeting in Today’s Competitive Business:

• The Budgeting Process
• The role of budgeting
• Annual budgeting process
• Identifying and resolving budgeting variances
• Different budgeting systems in use today
• Budgeting tips and techniques
• Variance analysis

Unit 5: Cash Flow & Investment Decisions:

• Capital budgeting
• Weighted Average Cost of Capital
• Present Value
• Internal Rate of Return – method
• Profitability Index
• Discounted cash flow