Finance for Non-Financial Managers
Overview
Every manager makes decisions with financial consequences. This course explains finance in plain language for non-financial managers: reading financial statements, understanding costs and profit, managing budgets, evaluating investments and talking confidently with finance colleagues.
Who should attend
Managers, engineers, project managers, and professionals without a finance background.
Training methodology
Interactive presentations, practical exercises, case studies, group discussions, role-plays where relevant, and a personal action plan that participants apply in their own work.
Objectives
By the end of this course, participants will be able to:
- Understand basic financial terms and statements
- Read profit, balance sheet and cash flow reports
- Understand costs, margins and break-even
- Manage a departmental budget
- Evaluate simple investment proposals
Course outline
Day 1Finance Basics
- Why finance matters to managers
- Key terms
- Accounting principles
- How money flows
- Quiz
Day 2Financial Statements
- Profit and loss
- Balance sheet
- Cash flow
- Profit versus cash
- Reading exercise
Day 3Costs and Profit
- Fixed and variable costs
- Margins
- Break-even
- Pricing basics
- Exercise
Day 4Budgets
- Preparing a budget
- Monitoring spending
- Explaining variances
- Working with finance
- Budget exercise
Day 5Investment Decisions
- Time value of money
- Payback and NPV
- Building a simple business case
- Financial risk
- Action plan
