The Finance Manual for Non-Financial Managers

Do you understand your company's annual reports and financial statements? Could you use some help in dealing with auditors, taxation, overdrafts and loans? If so, this is the book for you.

Finance is no longer solely the domain of the accountant.

Your ability to understand and use finance is crucial to you success as a manager.

Written for non-financial managers, The Finance Manual for Non-Financial Managers provides the novice with the essential information needed to get started, and the more confident user with the advanced skills necessary to complete their management toolkit.

It is packed with real-life scenarios, worked through examples and self-test exercises, as well as a series of practical checklists to ensure you have everything covered.

Mapped to the Management Charter Initiative (MCI) standards, this finance manual is the most comprehensive guide to the language and practice of finance for the non-financial manager.

1. Reporting to the outside world
• Company background
• The framework
• The report
• The financial statements
• The profit and loss account
• The balance sheet
• The cash flow statement
• Published accounts and the stock market
2. Analysing accounts
• Analysing company accounts
• Ratio analysis
• Applying ratios in credit control
• Corporate governance
• Auditors
3. The basics of accounting
• Double entry bookkeeping — the debits and the credits
• Accounting records
• Basic principles
4. Accounting within the organisation
• Internal versus external accounts
• The control cycle
• Structuring the plan
• Making budgets effective
• Cost centres
• Profit centres
• Measuring performance
5. Costing
• Introduction
• Cost — some definitions
• Traditional (absorption) costing
• Standard costing
• Activity based costing
• Sales versus inventory
• Accounting for throughput
• Costing — some general thoughts
6. Pricing
• Introduction
• Competitive position
• Product revisions
• Return on sales
• The 'Special Value Programme' (SVP)
• General points on pricing
7. Project Analysis
• What is project analysis?
• The basic tools
• Payback
• Internal Rate of Return (IRR) and Discounted Cash Flow (DCF)
• Some more advanced considerations
• WACC — the Weighted Average Cost of Capital
• Cashflows in perpetuity
8. Organisational control
• Introduction
• Internal control
• Fraud — a general profile
• Organisational control — whose responsibility?
9. Corporate taxation
• Tax — a strategy
• The main taxes on companies
• Capital allowances
• The taxation of multinationals
• Double taxation treaties
• Transfer pricing
• Using offshore centres and tax havens
• Holding company in Holland
• Company structure
• Summary
10. Financing
• The balance sheet
• The cash flow cycle
• Forms of financing
• Overdrafts and loans
• Bonds
• Credit terms
• Financing of specific assets
• Equity financing
11. Acquisitions
• Introduction
• Acquisitions — the strategic view
• What makes companies vulnerable to bids?
• Accounting implications
• Accounting policies
• Bids and the stock market
12. Risk and risk management
• Risk analysis
• Environmental/strategic risk
• Financial risk
• The forward contract
• Derivatives
• Financial futures — hedging versus speculation
• Other financial risks
• Longer-term risk
• The risk/reward relationship and the stock market
• The 'equity risk' of a listed company
• Conclusion

• Appendix A: Financial controls — who, where, when and how
• Appendix B: Some numerical trools
• Appendix C: The Greenbury report
• Appendix D: Present value tables

Easier than this it will not get and still be useful. You'll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands…