Reporting and Budgeting (Level 2)
Accredited by: LONDON INSTITUTE OF SKILLS DEVELOPMENT SIGNATURE PROGRAMME
Who should attend?
Those for who have studied finance and its part of their responsibility or they are new to management and need a greater understanding of financial management. They will be from all sectors, including private, public and not-for-profit including. This course assumes they already have a good appreciation and current knowledge of the topics covered in the Level 1 course.
- New managers or managers wanting to update their financial knowledge
- 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 improve key accounting concepts, and improve forecasting and cost management skills
- Managers who are 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.
- Junior Managers, Fresh Graduates & Final Semester Students to acquire a promising career in a reputable organization.
Learning Objectives
By the end of the course delegates will be able to:
- Describe and interpret essential financial management information
- Manage financial aspects of projects more effectively
- Address budgeting requirements with a longer-term perspective and justify expected expenditure
- Participate in investment portfolio construction
Course Content
Key Financial Concepts and Principles Covered in Level 1 Course
- Comparison of cash and accrual accounting
- Main features of IFRS and IPSAS
- The key statements according to IFRS and IPSAS
- Overview of the budget processes in public and private sector
- Assessing financial performance
Management Accounting
- Types of management information prepared for internal consumption
- Financial information managers need in order to be able to manage – the power of comparisons
- Historical revenues and profits, cost trends, product profit margins, receivables information, budget comparisons, break-even analysis and contribution margin analysis.
Managing the Costs and Finances of Projects
- The stages of project management
- Building the Business case and getting approval for funding
- Estimating project costs – expert, analogous parametric, bottom up estimating etc.
- Understanding Gantt charts
- Project forecasts
- Project risks and financial implications
Building an Effective Budget
- Public Sector context of financial management
- Public budgeting seen through four perspectives – political, economists, accountants, managers
- Approaches to budgeting including; line item budgeting, program budgeting, zero-based budgeting, priority-based budgeting
- Three pre-requisites for budget preparation
- Medium Term Expenditure Frameworks – aligning budgets
Investment and Risk
- Building an investment portfolio – key questions – WHY are we investing, REQUIRED RETURN, WHAT do we invest in, WHEN do we invest, WHERE do we invest
- Five key stages – risk preference, asset classes, amount to invest in each class, choose investments, monitor and rebalance
- Fundamental and Technical analysis techniques
- Identification and mitigation of key risks