Who should attend?

Executive and Non-Executive Directors, senior executives or aspiring directors looking to understand more about company finance.

Course Content

• The Three Key Financial Statements
  • Cash Flow Statements: Importance of cash flow and Impact of credit and credit control, Problems affecting cash flow, Dealing with Debtors and Creditors
  • Profit & Loss Account, Types of profit, and Layout & use of the profit & loss account
  • Balance Sheets: Assets; Liabilities; Net current assets, capital employed and how to interpret the information;
• Revenue and Capital Expenditure
  • What are Capital and Revenue Expenditure
  • Phasing of capital spend and its Implications for budget holders
• Depreciation; Assets and liabilities
  • What is Depreciation?
  • The Different types and uses
• Forecasts and Budgets
  • The purpose of forecasts for the business
  • Budget objectives
  • Budgetary Control as a management tool
  • Variance analysis
• Using Ratios to Support Investment Decisions
  • Return on Capital Employed (ROCE); Payback; Internal Rate of Return (IRR); Net Present Value of assets (NPV)
  • Investment decisions and Return on Investment (ROI); Cost of capital
  • Gearing, is the level of borrowing too risky?
  • Liquidity, could the company hit cash flow problems?
  • Profitability, how well is the company doing?

Learning Objectives

This half-day course enables participants to understand better, the key attributes and approaches that underpin a strategic and tactical financial approach to management and help to develop the key skills and styles that will allow participants to be more effective when adopting and applying a decision making approach to management.

By the end of this training course participants will be better able to:

• Read, analyse and interpret any set of Financial Statements, including the Balance Sheet, the Profit & Loss Account and the Cash Flow statements
• Understand and quantify the impact of the fundamental accounting concepts and the chosen policies upon any set of accounts
• Recognise and understand the underlying impact of the generally accepted accounting principles and policies on any Balance Sheet and Profit & Loss Account
• Understand the key differences between statutory published accounts and the internal monthly management accounts
• Identify and discuss the key financial issues facing an organisation
• Understand the wider commercial impact of any business decision and its interaction with non-financial aspects of the organisation, enabling you to make a better contribution to key discussions and decision making amongst managers and within the organisation
• Understand the basics of budgets and the implementation of budgeting processes
• Value any business using commonly used and widely accepted valuation techniques such as Net Asset Value, Enterprise Value and EBITDA
• Communicate more effectively and easily with Finance Directors, and other Finance professionals; through an in depth understanding of financial terminology, management and evaluation techniques.

Course Leader:
David Doughty CDir FIoD

The course is delivered by David Doughty, a Chartered Director and highly experienced Non-Executive, Chief Executive, Chair, Entrepreneur and Business Mentor. David has extensive executive and non-executive experience in small and medium enterprises in private and public sectors. He is also a board level consultant to multi-national organisations and a Chartered Director Ambassador for the Institute of Directors. See his LinkedIn profile here:

*Discounts on Excellencia course fees are available for:

• Tier1 members of NEDworks
• Tier1 members of Executive Transitions
• Members of Chartered Directir CDir.org