Finance for the Non Financial Manager in the Public Sector

About

Have you got a thorough grasp of the management of budgets, costings and capital expenditure?

Can you effectively analyse financial information from both internal and external sources?

If you are not confident working with financial concepts and language, you are not alone. Increasingly, more managers from the public sector are expected to make decisions based on a strong understanding of financials but without the assurance of a formal financial background. If organisational accounts, capital expenditure and accruals sound complicated to you, they don’t have to be.

Finance for Non Financial Managers in the Public Sector has been developed to demystify financial information and help you enhance your effectiveness as a manager. It has been created as a specialist alternative to the immensely popular Finance for the Non-Financial Manager course to answer the particular needs of managers from government departments, authorities and not for profit organisations. The course offers practical skills for you to add value to your organisation through more effective financial planning and budgeting and an appreciation of the usefulness of the balanced scorecard. You will emerge from the course with an understanding of the content of financial statements, how to analyse and interpret financial data, the importance of cashflow and matching budgets to realistic targets and you will explore how to accurately evaluate capital expenditure.

8 GREAT REASONS TO ATTEND
1. Understand the “big picture” of accounting and finance and how this relates to organisational decision-making
2. Recognise how the Public Finance Act affects your financial systems and obligations
3. Learn to read and analyse a set of organisational accounts
4. Recognise the importance of and gain the skills necessary to produce realistic and useful budgets
5. Integrate your strategic direction into your budgets and use it as a tool for measuring and managing performance
6. Effectively measure the impact of your decisions on your organisation’s financial position
7. Accurately evaluate capital expenditure and your return on capital employed
8. Understand the power of discounted cash flow in management decision-making

Outline

UNDERSTANDING FINANCIAL INFORMATION

The Accounting Process - From Transactions to Financial Information
• The sources of financial information
• Accounting systems, terminology and concepts
• Involving the Public Finance Act: focusing on outputs and linking outputs to outcomes
• Why the timing of a transaction is so important to the finance function
• The accounting records: general or nominal ledger & trial balance
• Debits and credits demystified
• Income vs expenditure, assets vs liabilities, capital vs revenue expenditure
• P&L account vs balance sheet: categorisations and their inter-relationships
• Accounting concepts and the accounting rule book: accruals, prudence, substance over form, true & fair, materiality

The Driving Forces Behind Financial Information
• The accountant’s role and the content of the annual report
• The role of finance and how the information you provide is used
• Statement of Intent: pros and cons
• An introduction to the Balanced Scorecard
• Meeting the different needs of financial information users: the finance function, types of accountants, financial vs management accounting and the treasury function
• Annual financial statements: why they are produced, contents, what you should look for and what is not revealed
• Practical examples of the Balanced Scorecard in the Public Sector
• Exercise: Applying accounting concepts

Analysing and Interpreting Financial Information
• The language of finance
• What accounts reveal about an organisation’s current situation, profitability and future prospects
• How to effectively use all the available information
• Why and how figures can be manipulated
• Understanding working capital management
• Learning the jargon and recognising what is revealed in the financial press
• How does the international dimension to accounting relate to you?
• Analytical review and ratio analysis:
   - Profitability (return on capital employed, profit margin and non-standard performance measures)
   - Efficiency (asset/stock turnover, debtor/creditor days)
   - Investment (interest/dividend cover, earnings per share, dividend yield)
   - Gearing
   - Liquidity (current ratios, working capital, cash cycles)
• Exercise: Analysing and interpreting an organisation’s annual report
• Exercise: Analysing the financial statements of two organisations in order to evaluate their relative strengths and weaknesses

Cash Flow and Cash Management
• Why and how cash is king
• Ways an organisation manages this most important resource
• The importance of cash flows in analysis and forecasting
• Cash vs profit: why profit does not tell the full story and the importance of cash
• Examining how cash flow statements indicate the stability, adaptability and long term potential of an organisation
• Cash flow forecasts as a planning tool
• How the treasury manages cash
• Using derivatives to manage financial risk
• Exercise: Identifying cash movements to predict future cash flows

TOOLS FOR EFFECTIVE DECISION MAKING

Planning and Budgetary Control
• Breaking down barriers between the management accounting and operations departments
• Why budgets play a key role and are not simply an annual chore
• Integrating budgets with strategy - the Balanced Scorecard in practice
• Purposes of budgets: the link between the strategic plan and the company culture
• Budgets as motivators
   - Tailoring your priorities to match your organisation’s wider strategic objectives
   - Setting realistic goals you can apply to your areas of responsibility
   - Improving incentives for good financial management: multi year appropriations and memorandum accounts
• Measuring and managing performance
   - The benefits of a performance management framework
• How your role relates to the budget cycle
• Doing more for less: key budgeting techniques
• When, why and how you should use zero/priority based budgets
• Post-budgeting review: variance analysis - how and why it is performed
• Understanding the difference between budgets and cash flows and how they relate to one another
• Exercise: “Budgeting - The Big Picture”: how you can make budgeting more efficient and improve on existing practices

Costing - Essential Tools for Effective Management
• Demystifying management accounting
• Introduction to key costing techniques
• The real usefulness of costing techniques for accurately calculating and ensuring profitability
• Overview of costing principles
• Understanding the differences between direct and indirect costs
• Overheads: allocation, apportionment and absorption
• Activity Based Costing
• Break-even analysis: ensuring fixed costs are covered
• Costing for control: standard costing
• Exercise: Determining accurate cost per unit for effective decision making

Evaluating Capital Expenditure - The Investment Decision
• Fundamental tools of investment appraisal
• Working with appraisal tools to maximum effect in the workplace
• Differential capital charge
• Cost of capital and WACC - how these are determined
• Return on capital employed: why it is used, what it tells us and its limitations
• Payback period: the problems of short-termism in investment appraisal
• Discounted cash flow techniques: the vital importance of net present value
• Sensitivity analysis: how sensitive are key decisions to potential changes in circumstances?
• Exercise: Evaluating the investment decision

Facilitator

Susan Hansen, Principal, [Financial Training Organisation]

Susan has worked in Financial Services since 1980.  She is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia and South Africa and has an MBA from the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business.

She worked for a ‘Big Four’ firm from 1980 to 1985 in Cape Town and London.  She then spent five years with Salomon Brothers, the Wall Street Investment Bank.

Since 1990 she has facilitated seminars on Financial Management and Accounting to Executives and University Students in New Zealand, Australia, South East Asia and South Africa.

In 1995 Susan moved to Auckland and as Strategy Consultant to the Auckland Regional Services Trust was the Project Manager on the feasibility study of the America’s Cup Infrastructure.  Following this she was Chief Executive of Viaduct Harbour Holdings Limited. 

Susan is currently Principal of a Financial Training Organisation.  She facilitates both public courses and in-house courses in New Zealand, Australia, China, South East Asia and Dubai.

Susan is currently a non-executive Director of Utilico Limited, listed in Bermuda. 

Susan is consistently rated as excellent in her delivery and content for presentations.

Susan Hansen is also facilitating:

• Finance for Executive Assistants & Personal Assistants
• Finance for the Non Financial Manager
• How to Think Like a CFO

In-house Training

Prices and Registration

* Early bird price available when you register and pay before the dates listed.