Financial Intelligence For Non-Finance Managers

Identify owners and directors as primary users, ensure credible, timely financial information and md&a insights to guide capital allocation, debt management, and conversations with banks and lenders.

Learn how accounting systems and processes create reliable financial information. Map activities to income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement, and apply accrual accounting and internal controls.

Strengthen internal controls and policies to protect assets and information, reinforce tone at the top, and understand fraud in misappropriation, corruption, and financial reporting, plus auditors' materiality role.

Explore how financial statements convey stories through the income statement under GAAP and IFRS rules, including notes, revenue recognition, and for-profit vs not-for-profit distinctions.

Define the top line as net sales and distinguish it from gross sales, then examine cost of sales, gross profit, operating margin, and burn rate to assess profitability.

Analyze the income statement to understand how net income is generated, using vertical and horizontal analysis, margins, and ratios like return on equity and return on capital employed, including ebita.

Analyze a real income statement for a mid-sized public steel and industrial products company. Evaluate growth drivers, margins, and return on capital employed, including earnings per share effects from buybacks.

Explore the asset side of the balance sheet, distinguishing current assets from capital assets, understanding working capital, depreciation, and the role of goodwill and bad assets.

Explore the liability side of the balance sheet, including current liabilities such as supplier payables and accruals, and the role of debt, covenants, and financial leverage in risk and returns.

Explore equity as the residual interest in the balance sheet, including retained earnings and capital stock, and learn how asset-based and income-based value methods determine its true value.

Explore financing strategy by examining uses of capital—operations, capital expenditures, working capital, mergers and acquisitions, and financial flexibility. Assess debt versus equity, WACC, and ROCE to optimize the capital mix.

Analyze balance sheet liquidity and working capital by examining current assets and liabilities, current ratio, accounts receivable and inventory turnover, and funded debt in relation to cash flow.

Explore the cash flow statement, its three sections—operating, investing, and financing activities—and how it reveals free cash flow, working capital changes, and capital allocation decisions.

Analyze cash flow statements by comparing income and operating cash flow, exploring working capital, capital expenditures, and discretionary financing decisions that drive free cash flow.

Learn to analyze notes to the financial statements, identify going-concern risks, and spot red flags, such as near-term debt maturities, off-balance-sheet liabilities, large contingencies, and subsequent event disclosures.

Learn to drill into variances to explain why actual results diverge from budgets, using pricing, volume, mix, quantity, and production cost variances, plus standard costing and bill of materials.

Explore costing and pricing analysis to reveal true product costs, identify cost drivers, and apply contribution margin, break-even, and target profit concepts for strategic pricing and budgeting.

Learn to evaluate long-term investments using discounted cash flows and net present value, considering cost of capital, taxes, working capital, and opportunity costs.

Explore how finance evolves from level one compliance driven to level three world class, becoming a strategic partner and trusted advisor for the CEO and the board.