Managing Profit & Loss
Duration 2 days
Objectives
At the end of 2 very informative and enjoyable days, you'll be looking forward to the arrival of the very documents you once feared! Well take the worry out of numbers and turn them into your ally, helping you to better manage the financial side of your business area. Youll learn to understand, influence and effectively manage the key documents required to run any budget or business area profitably. Youll learn many practical and invaluable ways to influence the profitability of your business area by managing margins and costs.
Because budgets play such a vital role in your business, we look at how they are constructed so as to manage them effectively over their entire lifecycle. In addition, you will learn to translate numerical data into a written form that is accurate, clear and concise, and therefore easy to communicate in an appropriate way to all levels of your business. Requirements
The course is aimed at all managers who are responsible for costs or generating profit in a media or a sales orientated business area, and managers accountable for the efficient running of cost centres, for example, an integral central department servicing multiple regions. Also, any managers who are required to manage a profit & loss account and who are involved in setting budgets.
Course Outline
Introduction to Budget Setting
Exploring the benefits of budgets
What methods are used for budgeting?
Comparing strengths and weaknesses in each budgeting method
Choosing the best budgeting method for your requirements
Key internal/external criteria and their impact on your budget
Producing your budget using previously identified data
Producing your written commentary to back up your data
Presenting your data: simulating a Board-Level presentation
Setting a phased budget
Review of previous session
Identifying different factors that affect budget phasing
Producing the previous sessions budget in phased form
Commenting and explaining budget variatons
Profit and Loss Analysis
The value of the Profit and Loss as a management tool
Dismantling Profit and Loss: what makes it tick?
What you can control and influence in Profit and Loss
What is ratio analysis is it really as bad as it sounds?
The benefits of ratio analysis
Profit and Loss Performance
Pinpointing areas performing well vs areas that require action
Comparing current ratios against previous performance ratios
Setting future targets to meet business requirements
Taking positive but realistic actions to improve performance
Creating a written commentary to confidently convey findings
Profit and Loss Forecasting
Establishing why forecasting is an important management tool
Case Study: Analysing an actual Profit and Loss account
Producing a forecasted Profit and Loss for the next period
Supporting your figures with a written commentary
Wrap up
Question and answer session
Review and feedback
Recommended next steps
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