Finance for Non-Financial Managers

Reading the numbers, defending a budget and understanding what a manager's decisions do to the accounts.

Levels it usually serves: L3 Technical, L4 Supervisory, L5 Senior, L6 Executive

What Members Come Away With

• Reading a management pack
• Building and defending a budget
• Cash, profit and why they differ

In Scope

Reading management accounts and a board pack, budgeting and forecasting, cost and margin literacy, cash against profit, capital requests, and financial literacy for directors who must interrogate what finance puts in front of them.

Out of Scope

Not accounting qualification training and not tax advice. This discipline exists to make non-financial people competent readers of financial information, not to make them accountants.

Situations We See

The Manager with a Budget They Did Not Build

Accountable for a number they had no hand in setting and cannot explain when it moves. The commonest version of this booking, usually run for a whole management layer at once.

The Board That Cannot Interrogate the Pack

Directors nodding through financials they do not fully follow, which is a governance exposure as much as a skills gap. Often bought quietly, alongside the governance discipline.

The Profitable Company with No Cash

The statements look fine and the bank account does not. Working capital literacy, and it is worth putting the operational managers in the room rather than only finance.