Course Details
Course Outline
10 days course
Introduction to Accounting
- The two forms of accounting: financial accounting and management accounting
- The regulatory and conceptual framework
- Qualitative characteristics of useful financial information
- Types of business entity
- The annual report and financial statements
Accounting Concepts and Systems
- Statement of comprehensive income (income statement)
- Statement of financial position (balance sheet)
- Statement of cash flows
- Preparing a set of financial statements
- The income statement: cost of sales working
- Underlying concepts: measurement rules and fundamental accounting concepts
- Three further property, plant and equipment issues
- Recording accounting information
Financial Analysis: Part 1
- Financial statement analysis for investment purposes
- Other users and their needs
- Horizontal analysis and trend analysis
- Vertical analysis
- Ratio analysis
- Weaknesses and limitations
Financial Analysis: Part 2
- The drive for information
- Stakeholder management
- Corporate social responsibility reporting
- Earnings announcements, conference calls and investor presentations
- Media relations: press releases and newspaper coverage
- Social media and internet bulletins
Business Planning
- Business planning and control: the role of budgets
- The budget-setting process
- Basic steps of preparing a budget
- Budgeting in different types of organisation
- Limitations and problems with budgeting
- Improving business planning and budgeting
Budgets and Performance Management
- Responsibility centres
- The controllability principle
- Profit-related performance measurement
- Standard costing and variance analysis
- Performance management in investment centres
- Non-financial performance indicators
- The balanced scorecard
- Performance measurement in not-for-profit organisations
- External influences on performance
Cash Flow
- How much cash does a business need?
- Methods of establishing cash balances
- Cash forecasting: the cash budget
- Cash management: strategies for improving cash flow
- Interpreting and analysing a cash-flow forecast
Pricing Decisions
- The accountant’s perspective – costing and pricing
- Absorption costing and full-cost-plus pricing
- Marginal-cost-plus pricing
- Activity-based costing (ABC) pricing
- Life-cycle costing and pricing
- The economist’s perspective
- The marketer’s perspective
- Combining the three perspectives: establishing an appropriate pricing strategy
- Pricing strategies
- Target pricing and target costing
Investment Decisions
- Investment appraisal – the basics
- Traditional evaluation techniques
- Incorporating real-world complexities into investment appraisal
- Investment appraisal within context
- Taking a broader strategic view
Operational Decisions
- Operational decision making
- Cost-volume-profit analysis (CVP)
- Relevant costing
