• Find out how to communicate better with your company's financial professionals
• Decipher financial terminology so you can clearly represent your plans and goals in the language of business
• Examine the 4 major financial statements that businesses use, and find out what information each one reveals
• Make better decisions when you understand how your activities show up on the financial statements
• Discover how important cash is to your business, and how you can help guarantee a healthy cash flow

Managers, supervisors, professionals, specialists, support staff and anyone who works with financial information must attend this seminar. It doesn't matter whether you work in manufacturing, customer service, marketing, purchasing, warehousing, human resources, sales, management or another area, you will leave this seminar with the skills to understand and translate your company's financial information quickly and easily.

Don't worry if you don't have a financial background — we know you're not an accountant, and we won't make you one. We will use interactive exercises and proven adult learning techniques to make the concepts crystal-clear to you.

Understanding the Financial Side of Business

• Understand the basics of finance and accounting so you can communicate better with your company's financial professionals
• Don't be confused by the jargon — terminology you need to know to figure out what your accountant is talking about
• Make better decisions when you understand how day-to-day activities translate into revenues and costs
• Determining the real value of your product or service ... adding direct and indirect costs to come up with the full cost
• Operating profit ... net income ... what management really means when they refer to the "bottom line"
• Examine the 4 major financial statements that businesses use, and learn easy ways to remember what transactions are recorded on each one
• Identify the purposes of income statements and balance sheets, and what information they will and will not tell you
• Reading between the lines of financial statements — learning about expenses that don't affect your company's cash position
• Find out why profits are not the same as cash, and why adequate cash reserves are so important to any business

Making Better Business Decisions Using Financial Information

• Discover the difference between finance and accounting information, and which gives you the facts you need to make decisions
• Understand how modifying or timing the decisions you make will contribute to your firm's financial health
• Cash is one of your company's most valuable assets — find out how your company manages it and plans for enough reserves so you can seize new business opportunities
• Using the cashflow statement to predict problems before they occur and head them off before they become crises
• Recognize the red-flag areas where cash can disappear if it's not properly managed
• You can help your company maintain a healthy cash flow! Buy from vendors offering longer payment or consignment terms and other proven techniques
• Discover all the costs that go into your products or services — how to track and assign direct and indirect costs to get an accurate cost of goods sold
• An overview of cost systems ... find out why different businesses use different cost systems and why
• How to account for the often-maligned expense of overhead, and why overhead is a necessary cost of doing business

Tools and Techniques to Manage the Business Better

• Understand the way your vendors, customers and competitors are structured financially ... sole proprietorships, partnerships and corporations will have different terms and cash requirements
• Learn how to develop and use ratios to compare your business to industry averages, and see where you have a competitive advantage and where you can improve your position
• Did you know money you receive today is worth more than the same amount received tomorrow? How to use present value computations to maximize your company's return on investment
• Get new project ideas approved using proven payback calculations
• Leverage your knowledge to figure out how much and when different types of businesses need cash to maintain an even cash flow
• How to build an assumption statement for the sales from a project that is specific, accurate and in alignment with the company's financial goals
• Revenue forecasting techniques that are accurate and take into account your company's financial objectives

Meeting Financial Goals and Ensuring Growth

• How to develop a realistic budget that considers your resource needs and your company's revenue requirements
• Work more effectively with your company's financial professionals by providing them with clear and accurate budget assumptions and calculations
• Consider external factors when you develop budget assumptions ... issues like new government regulations, changing demographics and technological advances, among others, can significantly affect your internal budget
• Discover new opportunities! Identify and analyze budget variances to find new ways to grow your business
• Areas to look at when developing a sound forecast, including seasonal variations in sales, your product's position in the product life cycle, new competitive actions, changes in your product's features and more
• How to use return on investment to get capital expenditures approved
• The effect that the depreciation of capital purchases has on financial statements
• Improve the performance of your department using "gap" analysis

"This was the most informative seminar I've attended. Thank you! I will be taking several ideas, suggestions and discussions back ... that I feel will help me work more successfully with my company."
Erin Smith
Environmental Services Co., Inc.

"Excellent! The best seminar I've ever been to. Very enlightening for both experienced and beginning managers."
Janice Fiore
Global Data Tech

"Excellent seminar. Great quotes and thoughts to use both professionally and personally."
Linda Hudson
Facility Coordinator
The Western Group

"Dynamic speakers addressing valuable thoughts for success in business. I learned a lot!"
Phyllis Morris
Marketing Communication Specialist
GE Commercial Dist. Fin.

"Everything was presented in a clear manner and easily understood."
Josh England
Utility Trailer Sales
Cole County Commission