Course Information

Course objectives

• Understand basic accounting and finance concepts
• Understand financial statements and auditors report
• KPI application and selection
• Performance benchmarking
• Application of Excel to financial forecasting, budgeting and presentation

Course outline

• derstand basic accounting concepts: IFRS vs GAAP, cash vs accrual basis
• Understand basic financial principles: NPV vs net cash, market value vs book value
• Understand financial statements: Statement of Income / Comprehensive Income, Financial Position, Cashflow, Changes in Equity, and selected notes to financial statements
• KPI application: depends on the nature of client’s business, will select and explain appropriate KPI’s for discussion and application
• Performance benchmarking: depends on the nature of client’s business, will select relevant competitors and compared their performances based on latest published financial information, participants will then learn to perform their own benchmarking against competitors
• Understand Auditor’s role and Auditor’s report
• Application of Excel:
• Techniques to improve efficiency: short-cut keys
• Financial Modelling basic principles: thought process
• Value-adding: scenarios

Course exercise

• Throughout the course, participants will be asked to perform exercises to reinforce and apply work-related real life situations to concepts learnt.

Course participants

• Non-finance professionals who want to gain a basic understanding of financial and accounting concepts
• Employees who want to understand how their daily operational decisions and workflows would impact the financial performances of their companies
• Managers / supervisors who want to improve the performance of their divisions/departments by benchmarking against other competitors and monitoring of key KPI’s
• Employees who want to improve their Microsoft Excel skill set