Title: Training for Financial Awareness: Developing Essential Skills
Authors: Mike Bolton and Chris Singer
Publisher: Gower Publishing Limited
Format: A4 loose leaf folder 385 pages
Price: £295
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Training for Financial Awareness has been designed to give non-financial managers the knowledge and skills they will require to use financial systems effectively. The training activities follow the progress of a management team at a fictitious kitchen manufacturing company. The team are carrying out a review following the bank’s concern at their increasing overdraft. The training is divided into eight sections:
- What’s this business all about? Using a SWOT analysis
- Finding out where the money’s gone
- So you’ve made a profit? What else does the P&L account tell you?
- Have you been increasing your worth? What the balance sheet tells you
- What’s happened to the flow of money? Using ratios to find out
- Ratios can save money and make you more profit
- Are your costs behaving themselves?
- How the figures can help you make better marketing decisions.
I found this case-study a useful way of understanding the different aspects of finance. By using a manufacturing company that makes a product everyone knows (fitted kitchen units) the user can consider the different marketing methods that are employed: direct sales, third party through other showrooms and new build to builders of new houses. It is also easy to understand the concepts of work in progress, raw materials, unsold stock etc.
The training carefully explains why various bits for information are required and how they will be of use to the management team. This includes the dreaded ratios that seem to cause confusion to most when first encountered. It would however, have been useful if there were some worked examples of the different ratios and perhaps a crib-sheet as a handout for the sessions.
The pack is designed like other Gower materials; there are trainer notes and sections that can be photocopied for participants. My only reservation is that this is finance training in its most traditional form. If ever there a subject was crying out for a more creative approach, finance would be it. However, I found this pack useful and it contained many ideas that could be used by trainers for financial awareness, whether or not they feel financially competent.
Matthew Simkin
Senior Training Adviser
National Museum of Science & Industry
