Finance for Non-Financial Managers

Finance for Non-financial Managers helps you understand finance, the language of business, so you can speak with your peers using the correct terms, concepts and appropriate foundational knowledge.  In this 1-day program you’ll also develop an understanding of all of the key financial documents, how to interpret them, and why they are important.  Financial terms and calculations will be explained in a way that makes sense for non-financial business professionals.  Finally, you will also be challenged to apply what you learn in class by analyzing how your work and your decisions are related to the overall performance of the company.

You can benefit from a better understanding of finance and accounting if you are an operations supervisor or manager at any level.

You will enhance your knowledge, credibility and decisions by:

• Knowing financial concepts and terminology
• Learning financial tools every professional should understand and knowing how to use and interpret them
• Understanding how the work you do impacts the bottom line and making appropriate choices based on this understanding
• Enabling you to have confident, informed conversations with your peers involving financial issues and decision

Topics of discussion for this program can include the following areas:

• Why Finance Matters
  • Demystifying financial jargon
  • Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP)
  • Public vs. private financial methodologies
  • Accountability and responsibility for financial information
• The Key Building Blocks of Financial Control: Decoding the income statement
  • Differentiating income, operating and capital expense items
  • Putting the pieces together to measure profit and business success
  • When a sale becomes a sale: sales recognition
• Analyzing the balance sheet
  • Evaluating the worth of an established business
  • Distinguishing between fixed and current assets and liabilities
  • Defining depreciation and amortization
  • Linking the income statement to the balance sheet
  • Shareholder equity
• Cash Flow: The Lifeblood of Organizations – Making the key connection between business activity and cash flow
  • Differentiating between cash flow, profit and net worth
  • Connecting cash management to line management
  • Credit and cash flow–maximizing benefits and minimizing costs
  • How much cash is enough
• The importance of depreciation and amortization
  • How depreciation impacts your budget over time
  • Methods for calculating depreciation
  • Advantages and disadvantages of various key methods
  • Impacting the management budget
  • Where depreciation rules come from
• Managing a Profit or Cost Center: The unique features of project costing
  • Estimating project duration and future costs
  • Leveraging debt to your advantage
  • Anticipating problems using cost control
  • Making estimates based on incomplete information
• Choosing projects that optimize shareholders’ interests
  • Making the financial case using return on investment (ROI)
  • Advantages and disadvantages of ROI, payback, discounted cash flow (DCF) and NPV techniques
  • Selecting viable projects
• A Manager’s Guide to Budgeting: Recognizing that budgets are more than numbers
  • Budgeting as sociology, not accounting
  • The relationship between a well-designed budget and how others measure your performance
  • Managing effectively within budgeting constraints
  • Developing the budget numbers
• Budgeting as a planning and control tool
  • Using the budget to control the business
  • Limiting factors o Budget process and coordination
  • Forecasting sales revenues and expenses
  • Adjusting the budget to reality