Financial Decision-Making Course for Managers

Finance. Boost your financial know-how.

This next-level finance course shows managers how to make decisions using their organisation’s financial information. You will learn to read, interpret, test and take action using the language and techniques of finance to support your strategic decisions.

This course will teach you to model, forecast, and plan for the financial impact of your decisions and help you stand out as a leader in your organisation. We will delve into the financial measures used to manage and judge organisational performance, identifying some key financial measures and understanding what they mean to the business. We will also cover longer-term financial decisions, and how to judge the financial performance of projects and purchases.

Please note: this class is intended as a follow-on from Finance Course for the Non-Financial Manager and it is recommended that you are familiar with the concepts included in the learning outcomes of that course as a prerequisite to this course.

Aims

We want to empower you to confidently make financial decisions, knowing how to read and interpret financial information, and test your ideas before presenting them to stakeholders. This course also aims to teach you financial language in a practical context, so that you can effectively present the outcomes of your decision-making to shareholders, investors, lenders, funders and donors.

Outcomes

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

• describe the “Flow of Finance” and its importance for all management decisions
• calculate break-even point and forecast profit or loss using Cost/Volume/Profit (CVP) analysis
• judge the impact of purchasing and pricing decisions
• quantify the relationship between money, time, and risk
• apply the concepts of Net Present Value, Payback Period, and Internal Rate of Return
• judge projects and proposals from a financial perspective
• apply financial literacy skills to manage financial decisions.

Content

The Flow of Finance

• Sources of Finance
• Uses of Finance
• Results

Cost/Volume/Profit (CVP) Analysis

• Identify cost behaviours – fixed, variable, mixed
• Cost and revenue drivers
• Calculate break-even point

Scenario Planning

• Forecasting the impact of pricing and costing decisions
• Conduct “What-if” analysis to model future impacts

The relationships between money, time, and risk

• Understand the ‘price’ of funding to an organisation
• See how risk analysis relates to this ‘price’ of funding

Financial Analysis Techniques

• Net Present Value (NPV)
• Payback Period (PP)
• Internal Rate of Return (IRR)

Project and Business Case approval techniques

• Apply NPV, PP and IRR to practice case studies

Intended audience

• Middle to Senior Managers
• Executive Managers
• Project and Program Managers

Delivery style

• Interactive facilitator-led discussion
• Case study application
• Excel based templates (a device capable of opening Excel files is required)

Materials

You will be provided the following materials in class:

• digital course notes
• case studies
• Excel templates.

Bring your own device

You are required to bring your own device (Windows or Mac). You should ensure your device is fully charged as access to power is limited. Please note that University does not carry any responsibility for your lost, stolen, or damaged devices whilst on the University premises.