Cascade Courses
Strategic Financial Management
Justin Marlowe
I'm a board member and I can't read the annual financial statements or understand the budget process! What's the difference between a balance sheet and an operating statement? What's a reasonable surplus? Course participants will get an introduction to the interpretation and use of financial statements. We'll explore the financial management issues of profitability, liquidity, asset management and long-term solvency. What does it really cost to provide our services? Why do I want to know? How do I know what costs to use when deciding to add or eliminate a program? Together we will also investigate the meaning and behavior of costs, specific processes, tools and techniques for budget analysis and the use of financial information for managerial decision-making. You will use breakeven analysis to make programmatic decisions and you will learn about contribution margin. The pedagogical techniques include scenario casework with agency budgets and financial decision-making tools.
Learning Objectives
You will get a user-oriented introduction to financial statements, financial management, and budgeting principles, techniques, and concepts. This will help to prepare you for managerial and/or analytical work in an environment where the use and understanding of financial information and budgeting are crucial to success (just about any environment!). At the conclusion of this two-day course, participants should be able to:
- Distinguish between accrual and cash accounting
- Articulate the information contained in the balance sheet, operating statement and statement of cash flows
- Demonstrate understanding between financial statements and organizational budgets
- Define cost terms such as direct, indirect, variable, fixed, sunk, differential, full, and marginal
- Describe the difference between cost allocation and resource allocation
- Use full cost and differential cost data to make managerial decisions
Who Should Attend
Do you know what it really costs to provide your services? Are you sure which costs matter to the decisions you are making? Can you read and interpret a set of financial statements, distinguishing issues like profitability, liquidity and solvency? If you answered "no" to any of these questions, then you will benefit from this two-day course on financial management and cost-based decision-making. This is not about "math", although we will certainly deal with numbers. If you can add, subtract, multiply and divide, with the use of a spreadsheet or calculator, you have all the math skills you need.
Instructors
Assistant Professor of Public Affairs, Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2004