Seminar Overview
Business executives and private investors need to understand the financial factors critical to business success. This interactive seminar shows you how finance works in today’s fast-paced business environment. You will understand the critical issues of profitability, liquidity and financial structure. You will understand the accounting process and principles of financial reporting together with how to budget and maximize profitability.
Who Should Attend
Private investors, and business professional who needs to understand how to read financial statements, budget variance reports, supplier and customer financial reports, of any financial report that supports key and critical decisions. If you need to know the language of business, this is ESSENTIAL Training.
What Will Be Covered
This program will cover the basics of the accounting process and the four basic financial statements including the Balance Sheet, Income Statement, the Statement of Shareholders’ Equity and the Cash Flow Statement. You will learn how to “Talk the Talk”, and how to calculate the key ratios essential for the effective analysis of any company’s financial reports. Finally, you will learn how to recognize the key “Red Flags” of financial fraud.
How You Will Benefit
You will learn how to evaluate the effectiveness of past performance, key decisions, and strategic initiatives. You will gain the confidence you need to participant in staff meetings, identify processes that drain profitability, and what you can do to enhance the value of your company.
This program will address critical topics such as:
- Learn the financial jargon and communicate effectively with the financial professionals
- Understand the role and the limitations of company financial reports
- How to avoid being mislead by “Aggressive” income statements
- How to identify the “Red Flags” of fraudulent financial statements
- How to calculate the 10 Key Ratios essential for investors and business professionals
- How to relate financial performance to the industry and the market
- How to develop sound investment decisions
- Understanding the Time Value of Money
- Calculating Key Indicators to Evaluate Proposed Capital Projects
- Incorporating Terminal Value into Capital Project Analysis
PROGRAM AGENDA
DAY ONE
How to “Talk the Talk”
- Learning the Financial “Jargon”
- The nature and purpose of accounting
- How the Debits and Credits of Accounting really work
- Cash vs. Accrual Accounting
- U.S. vs. International Accounting
Making Sense of the Annual Report
- The Income Statement – The results of operations
- The Balance Sheet – the statement of position
- The Cash Flow Statement – the true story
- Notes to Financial Statements – basis for analysis
Analyzing the Annual Report
- Ratio Analysis – The heart of Financial Analysis
- Use Excel® templates to calculate and interpret liquidity, leverage and profitability ratios
- Interpret the results of ratio analysis from an accrual accounting perspective
- How to use the financials to validate new customers and suppliers
- How to enhance the Cash-To-Cash Cycle
- The inter-relationship between the DuPont Formula, EVA® and the Altman Z-Score
- Use various investment surveys to benchmark the results of financial analysis
DAY TWO
Identifying the Red-Flags of Fraud
- Overview of the Nature and Indicators of Financial Statement Fraud
- The Seven Horsemen of Fraud
- Key Ratios to Measure the Potential for Fraud to Occur
Cash Flow Analysis and Cash Planning
- Understanding the Cash Flow Statement
- Using the Cash Flow Statement to identify accounting irregularities
- Determine Cash Flows related to Operations, Investing, and Financing activities
- Evaluate the various calculations of “Free Cash Flow”
- Interpret the results of ratio analysis from a cash accounting perspective
Projecting the Potential Benefit of Capital Project Proposals
- The Time Value of Money – How Discounted Cash Flows Work – PV, FV, PMT and others
- The Nature of Capital Spending and the Determination of the WACC and Hurdle Rate
- Identifying Initial and Annual Cash flows of a Capital Project
- Incorporating Terminal Value into Capital Project Projections
- Applying Key Financial Ratios to maximize the return on Capital Investments
- Determining Which Project to Fund, Calculating NPV, IRR, MIRR, Discounted Payback Period
- Determining the initial and subsequent capital project cash flows
- Developing the Capital Spending Budget
- Evaluating Capital projects by applying NPV, IRR, MIRR, and Discounted Payback models
Course Summary and Wrap-Up
This section provides you with the opportunity to address any specific issues with the total group as a resource, to review any specific issue or topic addressed in the program, or to just recap the benefits received from the program and the group as a whole. Your specific learning objectives are addressed and program evaluations are completed.
