Workshop on Financial Management Skills for Office Administrators & Secretaries

Program overview:

The office administrators, secretaries and personal assistants may typically have other tasks to undertake these days including basic finance administration, account management and purchasing responsibilities. This program is designed to provide an introduction to the finance and accounting for office administrators and secretaries who have no prior knowledge of this business area. It is designed to train them to support operational and financial processes. They will gain a clear understanding of the essentials of finance and accounting terms. The overall aim of this program is to ensure that participants leave with skills sets to perform more effectively and efficiently within the workplace.

For whom:

This program is designed for Secretaries, Office administrators, Personal assistants, and executive assistants, Administrative professionals and support staff. The program will equally be beneficial to anyone wishing to increase or update their knowledge and understanding of finance and accounting methods and terminology.

Learning objectives:

At the end of the course, participants will be able to: 

• explain the importance of the accounting and finance function, and how it links with every part of the organization;
• list and explain commonly used finance and accounting terminology thereby allowing them to make a valuable contribution to the workplace in meetings or in a supportive role;
• explain the principles of accounting for routine business transactions;
• summarize the results of business transactions over a period of time, and prepare simple financial statements, including the Income Statement, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow Statement;
• analyze and compare company performance using basic ratios; and
• apply costing and budgeting techniques to help the company to maintain efficiency and profitability.

Course outline:

DAY 1 – Introduction to Finance and Accounting

• Accounting and Finance: Overview
• Sources of Long-term and Short-term finance
• What is Financial Accounting?
• What is Management Accounting?
• Simple rules of double-entry bookkeeping
• How to record the things you buy and the things you sell?
• How to record business payments and receipts?
• Depreciation: Explanation of the various methods and their impact on profit

DAY2 – Understanding Financial Statements

• How to prepare basic financial statements – the Income Statement and the Balance Sheet
• The key elements of financial statements defined and explained
• How is profit calculated?
• The difference between revenue & capital expenditure
• Assets – current and non-current, Liabilities – current and non-current
• The meaning of working capital, Company net worth

DAY 3 –Basic Evaluation of Financial Statements

• Evaluation of financial statements
• Stakeholders and their information needs
• How to calculate accounting ratios, how to use ratio analysis

 to assess performance

• Profitability ratios, Liquidity ratios
• Operating efficiency ratios, gearing ratios, The Cash Flow

Cycle and Working Capital

• Valuing a company – Book Value versus Market Value

DAY 4 – Cost and Costing Systems

• Collecting and analyzing costs
• Types of cost analysis: by type, by location, by

 behaviour, by purpose

• Overheads, and how should we analyze them
• What is the Cost of Production: Marginal and

Total Costing?

• What is inventory, and how does it affect the cost of

production?

• Methods of valuing inventory – FIFO, LIFO, and

AVCO explained

• Marginal Costing – how costs and profit vary with volume
• How to measure the break-even point and

the margin of safety?  What-if Analysis

DAY 5 –Budgeting and Budgeting Process

• Why do we Budget? The benefits & limitations of budgets
• The key features of budgets
• Basic budget forecasting techniques
• How to prepare a departmental budget?
• Comparing actual performance with the budget – Variance Analysis
• Do budgets motivate or de-motivate?

Training Methodology

Lectures, discussions, exercises, and case studies will be used to reinforce these teachings/learning methods.