Finance and Budgeting Essentials for Business Professionals

Overview

Good financial judgment can deepen the decision-making skills of any business professional. Fluency with monetary figures helps you tie everyday operations to the financial success of your organization at a department and senior level. Finance and Budgeting Essentials for Business Professionals grounds you in the functions and tools of finance. In this course, you will examine financial statements—including the balance sheet, income statement, cash flow statement, and statement of stockholders' equity—as guides to fiscal health. You will also identify what you want to gain from a budget and describe the steps of budgeting to meet these goals. This course is designed for managers and other professionals in a variety of profit and non-profit organizations who need to use principles of finance or budgeting to fulfill their responsibilities. In this course, you will: describe the importance and major elements of financial statements; use balance sheets to determine the assets a company has at its disposal; interpret income statements to identify corporate earnings, expenses, and profitability; read cash flow and other statements to assess an organization’s real-world financial situation; select a budget type and method to fit the needs of a company; and prepare a responsible budget.

Syllabus

Reviewing Financial Basics

Keeping an eye on the bottom line makes you more effective in any organization. The financial side of a business allows its operations to continue, supports monetary decisions, and organizes information in a concise, numerical format.

Interpreting Balance Sheets

Balance sheets show the basic financial position of a company. To assess the financial health of any organization, you should be able to glance at a recent balance sheet and gain a sense of the resources the business has at its disposal.

Interpreting Income Statements

Income statements show the profit or loss of an organization over a span of time. Using an income statement lets you form judgments about how the entity earns and spends its money.

Interpreting Other Financial Statements

Depending on your stake in an organization, you may need to review its cash flow statement, its statement of stockholders' equity, or the footnotes that accompany its financial statements. These documents reveal different financial strengths and concerns as handled by company management.

Planning a Budgeting Approach

Fluency with financial accounts, objectives, and metrics can help you follow a budget. The budget then lets you tie the bottom line to management decisions and company operations.

Utilizing Budgets

To gain the most from a budget, you must apply principles of budgeting to the particular needs of your department or organization. Using the written budget then helps you keep your decisions and spending on target in terms of the most relevant accounts.