Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs, Executives and Directors

Learning Objectives

• To identify the users and their needs
• To recognize the importance of accounting processes, systems, and internal controls
• To analyze financial statements to evaluate performance, financial strength, and cash flow generation
• To evaluate variances and root cause of performance
• To assess costing analysis and decisions of operating leverage
• To Make investment decisions and critically analyze forecasts

Course Description

Great entrepreneurs, executives and directors know when they are talking dollars, they are making sense. When they look at a set of financial statement, they can immediately evaluate performance, identify issues, and probe for insight. Whether they are in the boardroom, a conference, or a meeting for dinner, they are comfortable talking about the numbers to raise money, negotiate deals, or make investment decisions. Financial intelligence gives these senior people their swagger.

This online CPE course is uniquely designed to show you how seasoned executives act and sound like financial experts without dwelling on the details of how one prepares financial reports and analysis. The emphasis of this online continuing education course is on the users of financial information and serving their needs to make better decisions. 

In this continuing professional education course, you will learn to look at financial statements through the eyes of a seasoned executive. You will learn how to probe into issues of performance and identify root cause. You will learn to rise above the preparation aspects of accounting and finance that bog down many new financial professionals and scare most non-financial professionals. The insights will help you negotiate your next financing or make your next investment decision. Regardless of whether you have a financial background or not, you will benefit from taking this course to hone your financial intelligence.

Major topics covered in this online CPE webinar:

• Who uses financial information and for what purpose?
• Where does financial information come from?
• Internal controls and why you should care?
• What are the accounting rules?
• How to read the income statement in the right way?
• How to analyze income to evaluate performance?
• You do it: analyze this income statement
• Sorting good assets from bad
• Assessing the money, you owe to others
• How you should think about equity?
• Setting financing strategy
• You do it: analyze this balance sheet
• Evaluating cash flow and the capital allocation decisions
• You do it: analyze this cash flow statement
• What to watch for in the notes to the financial statements
• Drilling into performance issues with variance analysis
• Understanding cost behavior to predict profitability
• Managing the budget process
• Evaluating a capital budgeting analysis to determine whether to invest
• Assessing your finance function

Overview

• Capital Allocation

  7 mins
• Reading financial statement

  32 mins
• Return ratios

  53 mins
• Working Capital

  79 mins
• Equity math...

  97 mins
• Cost of Capital

  112 mins
• Which actiities were discretionary & which were operating?

  133 mins
• Costing analysis

  154 mins
• Capital budgeting

  181 mins