Financial
Management

Managing a business means managing its financial resources, regardless of your job title. Your ability to make smart decisions about projects relies on your understanding of  timelines and cash-flow calculations to track cash flow and payments, the value of securities and investments, and how to determine overall cost effectiveness. To do this, you need a good working knowledge of a number of financial concepts.

This course introduces you to those concepts and shows you how to perform important calculations using financial calculators and popular spreadsheet applications. You’ll develop an intuitive understanding of the concepts and have a chance to practice applying the tools. You will come away with the tools to ensure that your company has the best possible chance of project success through managing its financial resources wisely.

* Participants in this course need one of the two financial calculators below.

• Hewlett-Packard 12C, or
• Texas Instruments BA II Plus

Both calculators are available at most office supply stores and from a variety of online sources. There is also a Texas Instruments BA II Plus app for iPhone and iPad , which meets the calculator requirement for this course.

The key to financial success for any business is choosing the right projects to pursue at the right time, for the right price and with the right financing structure. Your role as a manager includes participating in decisions about which projects make sense for the company and are likely to return a profit.

To do so, there are six concepts you need to understand: net present value, internal rate of return, payback period, discounted payback period, profitability index, and equivalent annual cost. Non-financial managers need to be conversant in how each of these concepts work to be able to offer valuable insight and expertise.

Working through the examples in this course using both a financial calculator and popular spreadsheet applications will help you practice applying the tools and strategies, and will set you up to make project decisions that lead to growth and profitability.

* Participants in this course need one of the two financial calculators below.

• Hewlett-Packard 12C, or
• Texas Instruments BA II Plus

Both calculators are available at most office supply stores and from a variety of online sources. There is also a Texas Instruments BA II Plus app for iPhone and iPad , which meets the calculator requirement for this course.

Your new project not only needs funding—it needs the right type of funding. You need to know how to choose between debt and equity funding, and when to consider acquiring funds from capital markets. These outside funding sources will have their own expectations for rates of return, and the cost of this funding is driven by a number of external factors such as the state of the economy and the industry.

Making sound capital budgeting and funding decisions is a vital part of your role as a manager, and this course shows you how characteristics of capital markets impact the process and prospects of raising capital. Learn how to observe external economic data, tips for developing strategies to balance debt and equity at your firm, and how decisions regarding corporate restructuring, mergers, acquisitions and bankruptcy are made.

These concepts, when put into action, will help ensure that you are maximizing the value of your firm using the correct balance of debt and equity.

The course Risk and Return: How to Identify, Measure, and Incorporate Into Capital Budgeting Decisions is required to be completed prior to starting this course.

Every property’s finance function keeps detailed records of the daily transactions involved in the running the organization. Periodically, they create reports that allow management, stakeholders and regulating authorities to have insight into the financial health of the organization. As a manager, you need to understand both the metrics that are reported in income statement, balance sheets, and cash flow statements, and how they relate to each other. You also need to understand how comparing numbers across your company, the industry, and from year to year, can help you assess the overall financial performance of the firm.

The in-depth review of sample case studies in this course will provide you with the tools you need to examine your own property’s reports. As you make budgeting and investment decisions, your knowledge of how vital financial markers indicate relative health in the organization will help drive initiatives to meet your company’s financial goals.

A company’s financial performance, and its ability to grow and thrive over time, can be assessed through ratio analysis, the basic evaluation tool for asset management, solvency and profitability. Whether you are managing the financial performance of a department, unit, or the organization as a whole, working with these ratios can help identify opportunities and allow you to make adjustments to improve performance.

As you become familiar with asset management ratios such as days sales outstanding and days to turnover, you will be able to apply these techniques in comparing your company’s performance against others in the industry and against its own financial history. The ratio analysis tools you learn will help your organization to design and implement initiatives for increased productivity and profitability.

The course Understanding Financial Statements is required to be completed prior to starting this course.