An intensive professional development training course on
Mastering
Accounting, Budgeting
& Performance Measurement
The Structure
This comprehensive training course consists of two modules which can be booked as a 10-Day Training event, or as individual, 5-Day training courses.
Module 1 - Financial Bootcamp for Non-Financial Professionals
Module 2 - The Essentials of Budgeting & Cost Control
The Course Content
Module 1: Financial Bootcamp for Non-Financial Professionals
Day One: Business Organizations, Sources of Finance, the Finance Function
- The development of business organizations
- The role of Finance and the Finance Function
- Sources and types of finance for business organizations
Teamwork exercise: preparing a business plan to present to potential investors
- The structure of the financial accounting system
- The Income Statement and Statement of Financial Position
Teamwork exercise: Financial accounting and reporting case study
Day Two: The Annual Financial Report
- The purpose and format of the Annual Financial Report (AFR), prepared according to IFRS.
- The financial and non-financial elements of the AFR
Teamwork exercise: Assessing the effectiveness of the AFR as a means of communicating with our key stakeholders
- The difference between cash flow and profit
Teamwork exercise: Preparing and presenting a Cash Flow Statement
- How to analyse and interpret the AFR
Teamwork exercise and presentation: Assessing a company’s performance and position by analyzing their AFR
Day Three: Management Accounting
- Understanding the difference between management accounting and financial accounting
- Calculating the cost of our products and the problem of overheads (indirect costs)
- Overhead apportionment – absorption costing versus Activity Based Costing
Teamwork exercise: Preparing cost estimates for a contract bid
- Cost-Volume-Profit and break-even analysis
- Budgeting – objectives and process
Teamwork exercise: preparing next year’s budgets for a manufacturing business
- Analysing the differences between budget and actual, using Variance Analysis
Day Four: Investment Appraisal
- The time value of money – future values and present values, perpetuities and growth
Group discussion: Identifying new investment opportunities for your business:
Teamwork exercise: Basic appraisal methods – Accounting Rate of Return and Payback
- The cost of capital - Equity and Debt
Teamwork exercise: Calculating the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC)
Teamwork exercise: Advanced appraisal methods – Net Present Value (NPV) and Internal Rate of Return (IRR):
- Dealing with capital rationing using the Profitability Index method
- Dealing with forecasting uncertainty using Sensitivity Analysis
Teamwork exercise: Comprehensive investment appraisal mini-case
Day Five: Treasury and Risk Management
- Interest rate risk
Group discussion: The role of Treasury
- Managing interest rate risk using options and swaps
Teamwork exercise: Devising an effective interest rate swap
- Foreign currency risk
- Managing foreign currency risk using natural techniques
- Managing foreign currency risk using transactional techniques
Teamwork exercise: Hedging the risks of a foreign currency transaction
Module 2: The Essentials of Budgeting & Cost Control
Day Six: The Role of Budgeting & Cost Control
- The complexity of managing contemporary organizations
- Strategic planning, budgeting and management control systems
- The key elements of budgeting: objectives, initiatives and resources
- Understanding the context for budgeting & the role of the controller
- What are the advantages and the disadvantages of budgeting
- What is it the situation in your organization? How to improve it?
Day Seven: Budgeting and Cost Control
- What are the essential inputs of the budgeting process?
- What is zero-based budgeting?
- Costing for budgeting: key terms and concepts
- Variable vs. Fixed costs
- The important role of contribution margin
- Cases, problems and examples
Day Eight: Costing: From Traditional to Activity-Based
- Complementing traditional costing with activity-based costing
- Direct vs. indirect cost
- Cost allocation: traditional costing and activity-based costing (ABC)
- From traditional budgeting to Activity-based budgeting (ABB)
- The importance of costs analysis
- Cases, problems and exercises
Day Nine: Capital Budgeting
- Capitalized vs. period costs
- Capital budgeting
- Payback period
- Net-present value
- Internal rate of return
- What is it the situation in your organization?
Day Ten: Beyond the Budgets: linking financial and non-financial KPIs
- What are the limits of budgeting and financial reporting?
- What are the drivers of the business model?
- What are the trades-off in place?
- Beyond budgeting: integrating financial and non-financial issues
- The balanced scorecard and KPIs
- Case, problems and examples