Financial Fluency for Managers Training Course

Duration 5 days 10 modules · 33 contact hours
Level Intermediate Certificate on completion
Who attends Department Managers, Programme and Project Managers and others
Fee from USD 1,100 KSh 95,000 for Kenyan organisations
Where 52 cities + online See dates by city
Next start 9 Nov 2026 Course code SD-FM-092

Before you join: Participants should have experience managing a team, project, budget line, contract, service area or commercial activity.

Dates & prices

Two start dates a month in every city, and live online on weekdays or weekends. Fees are per participant; classroom fees include tuition, materials, lunch and refreshments, and the certificate.

Suggest a date or city

Showing the next six months. Later dates, other cities and private deliveries for your team are available on request.

Course overview

Managers make decisions every week that affect margin, cash, investment, staffing and risk, yet financial information is often presented in formats that obscure the operational drivers behind the numbers. This course gives managers a practical way to read management accounts, question assumptions, identify the causes of performance movements and make financially defensible recommendations. It focuses on decisions such as whether to approve expenditure, revise a forecast, change pricing, pursue an investment or address a cash shortfall.

Participants build working knowledge of the income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement, then connect these statements to business activity. They analyse ratios, margins, working capital, cost behaviour, budgets, forecasts and investment proposals. The course also covers revenue recognition, inventory valuation, capital expenditure appraisal, financing choices, internal controls and financial risk. Participants learn to distinguish accounting profit from cash, relevant costs from allocated costs, and recurring performance drivers from one-off reporting effects.

Teaching combines short instructor briefings with financial statement analysis, management cases, group calculations, forecasting simulations and decision-memo work. Cases reflect realistic issues faced by banks, public bodies, manufacturers, service organisations and international businesses, including delayed customer receipts, budget overruns, pricing decisions and capital requests. Participants leave with a Financial Decision Toolkit containing reusable templates for ratio analysis, rolling cash forecasts, budget variance analysis, investment appraisal and decision papers. A certificate of completion is issued to participants who complete the course.

The course is suited to managers who hold budget, operational, programme, commercial or project responsibility and need greater confidence when working with finance teams or presenting recommendations to senior decision-makers.

What you will be able to do

  • Interpret income statements, balance sheets and cash flow statements for management decisions
  • Calculate and explain profitability, liquidity, efficiency and gearing ratios
  • Apply contribution margin, break-even and relevant-cost analysis to operating decisions
  • Build driver-based budgets, rolling forecasts and variance explanations
  • Prepare a 13-week cash forecast using operational receipts and payment assumptions
  • Evaluate capital expenditure proposals using net present value, internal rate of return and payback
  • Assess financing, financial risk and internal control implications of management proposals
  • Present evidence-based financial recommendations through clear decision memos and dashboards

Benefits of attending

For you

  • Greater confidence questioning financial reports and forecast assumptions
  • Stronger business cases for expenditure, investment and resource requests
  • Clearer explanations of budget variances to senior managers
  • Improved ability to distinguish profit movements from cash consequences
  • A reusable set of templates for recurring financial decisions

For your organisation

  • Better-informed spending and investment approvals
  • Earlier identification of cash flow and working capital pressure
  • More credible budgets and rolling forecasts
  • Improved accountability for cost, margin and operational drivers
  • Clearer communication between finance teams and budget holders

Course modules

10 modules over 5 days

Participants can explain how financial statements connect to management decisions and operational activity.

  • Finance function responsibilities: stewardship, planning, control and informed resource allocation
  • Income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement relationships
  • Accrual accounting versus cash accounting in management reporting
  • Working capital movements traced through the operating cash cycle
  • Materiality and accounting estimates examined when interpreting reported figures
  • Management accounts compared with statutory financial statements and disclosures

Participants can identify the accounting treatments that affect reported profit, assets and liabilities.

  • Double-entry bookkeeping logic behind debits, credits and account balances
  • Revenue recognition timing under IFRS 15 and contractual performance obligations
  • Expense matching, depreciation and amortisation effects on period profit
  • Inventory valuation using FIFO and weighted-average cost methods
  • Provisions, contingencies and impairment indicators affecting reported earnings
  • Month-end close sequence from source transactions to management accounts

Participants can analyse financial performance, position and trends using ratios and comparative evidence.

  • Common-size statements reveal structural changes in revenue, costs and assets
  • Liquidity ratios assess short-term payment capacity and working capital pressure
  • Profitability ratios separate margin performance from asset utilisation
  • DuPont analysis connects return on equity, margin, turnover and gearing
  • Trend analysis distinguishes recurring movements from one-off accounting effects
  • Peer benchmarking adjusts for business model, accounting policy and scale

Participants can assess costs, margins and pricing choices using relevant management accounting methods.

  • Cost behaviour classified as fixed, variable, stepped and mixed
  • Contribution margin calculation supports product, customer and channel decisions
  • Cost-volume-profit analysis identifies break-even volume and target-profit sales
  • Relevant costing separates avoidable costs from sunk and allocated costs
  • Activity-based costing assigns overheads using activities and cost drivers
  • Pricing decisions test margin, capacity constraints and competitor responses

Participants can produce and explain budgets, forecasts and variance analyses linked to operational drivers.

  • Operating budgets connect sales assumptions, resource plans and accountability
  • Driver-based budgeting links expenditure to volumes, headcount and service levels
  • Rolling forecasts update expected results using current operational evidence
  • Flexible budgets isolate volume effects from spending and efficiency variances
  • Variance analysis separates price, volume, mix and yield causes
  • Forecast confidence ranges communicate uncertainty without false precision

Participants can diagnose working capital issues and prepare short-term cash forecasts.

  • Cash conversion cycle measures days sales, inventory and payable outstanding
  • 13-week rolling cash forecast built from receipts, payroll and supplier data
  • Receivables ageing identifies collection priorities and expected credit losses
  • Inventory policy balances availability, obsolescence risk and cash tied-up
  • Payment terms assessed against supplier relationships, discounts and liquidity
  • Scenario analysis tests cash headroom under delayed receipts and shocks

Participants can evaluate investment proposals using cash-flow-based appraisal methods and stated assumptions.

  • Capital expenditure proposals distinguish cash flows, accounting profit and depreciation
  • Net present value discounts incremental cash flows at required return
  • Internal rate of return interpreted alongside reinvestment and scale limitations
  • Payback period exposes liquidity timing but ignores later cash flows
  • Sensitivity analysis tests volume, price, cost and discount-rate assumptions
  • Post-investment reviews compare approved cases with realised financial outcomes

Participants can assess financing choices, financial exposures and the controls required for sound stewardship.

  • Debt, equity and retained earnings compared by cost, risk and control
  • Weighted average cost of capital informs investment hurdle-rate selection
  • Interest coverage and debt service ratios assess borrowing capacity
  • Foreign exchange, interest-rate and commodity exposures identified from cash flows
  • Segregation of duties reduces error and fraud within financial processes
  • Approval limits and audit trails strengthen expenditure control

Participants can communicate financial findings and recommendations clearly to non-finance decision-makers.

  • Decision memos frame financial recommendations, assumptions, risks and requested actions
  • Waterfall charts explain bridges between budget, forecast and actual results
  • Dashboard design selects leading indicators, financial measures and decision thresholds
  • Variance narratives distinguish controllable drivers from external conditions
  • Scenario comparisons present base, downside and upside financial implications
  • Finance-business partnering challenges assumptions while preserving constructive accountability

Participants can create a focused plan for applying financial methods to an immediate management issue.

  • Business case structure links strategic rationale, options, economics and implementation
  • Assumption registers document sources, owners, timing and validation methods
  • Decision rights clarify accountable owners, approvers and financial thresholds
  • Action plans convert financial findings into dated management commitments
  • Personal finance application plan targets immediate reporting and decision improvements
  • Peer review criteria test clarity, evidence, feasibility and financial impact

Exercises and examples are adapted to each cohort's sectors and roles.

What you take back to work

  1. Financial statement interpretation checklist
  2. Ratio analysis workbook
  3. 13-week rolling cash forecast template
  4. Driver-based budget and variance analysis template
  5. Capital investment appraisal model
  6. Financial decision memo template

Who should attend

  • Department Managers — need to manage budgets, costs and performance commitments
  • Programme and Project Managers — need to assess funding, forecasts and investment decisions
  • Commercial Managers — need to evaluate pricing, margin and customer profitability
  • Operations Managers — need to connect operational drivers with cash and cost outcomes
  • Public Sector Managers — need to justify expenditure and monitor budget accountability
  • Non-Finance Executives — need to challenge financial information before approving decisions

Skills and tools covered

Financial statement analysisCash flow forecastingBudget variance analysisInvestment appraisalCost-volume-profit analysisFinancial decision communication

Tools and standards

IFRS 15, DuPont analysis, Cost-volume-profit analysis, Net present value

How the course runs

Training methodology

The course uses short instructor briefings to establish concepts, followed by guided analysis of financial statements, management accounts and decision data. Participants work through cases involving margin pressure, delayed collections, budget variances, capital requests and financing choices. Group exercises apply ratio analysis, cash forecasting, cost-volume-profit analysis and investment appraisal. Simulations show how changing operational assumptions affects profit, cash and risk. Each participant develops an application plan for using the methods in their own reporting and decision responsibilities.

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have experience managing a team, project, budget line, contract, service area or commercial activity. They should be comfortable working with percentages, basic arithmetic and spreadsheet-based reports. Familiarity with their organisation's budget or management reporting pack is useful but not essential. No accounting qualification, advanced mathematics, financial modelling background or prior study of IFRS is required. The course explains accounting terminology and calculations before applying them to management decisions.

A typical training day

08:30 – 10:30First session
10:30 – 10:45Refreshment break
10:45 – 12:30Second session
12:30 – 13:30Lunch and networking
13:30 – 15:00Third session
15:00 – 15:15Refreshment break
15:15 – 16:30Workshop and daily review

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in East Africa Time, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

  • Instruction by a practitioner facilitator
  • Full course workbook and materials
  • Exercise files, templates and case studies
  • Refreshments and lunch on classroom deliveries
  • Certificate of completion
  • Post-course application plan

Frequently asked questions

You need experience working with budgets, reports, projects, services or commercial decisions, plus comfort with basic percentages and arithmetic. No accounting qualification or prior technical study of financial reporting standards is required.

Bring a laptop if possible, as the course uses spreadsheet-based calculations and templates. You may also bring a non-confidential budget, management report or business case from your workplace for reference.

It is designed for managers who make or influence spending, pricing, staffing, project, operational or investment decisions. It is particularly useful for budget holders and managers who need to work more effectively with finance teams.

This course focuses on using financial information to make and explain management decisions rather than preparing statutory accounts. It uses practical calculations and spreadsheet templates, but does not train participants to build advanced valuation or corporate finance models.

Participants can use the methods to analyse monthly performance, explain variances, assess a proposed purchase, improve a cash forecast or prepare a decision paper. The final module produces an application plan linked to a current management responsibility.

Each training day runs from 08:30 to 16:30 and provides about 6.5 contact hours. Time is divided between instructor briefings, financial analysis, case work, group calculations, simulations and application planning across ten modules.

Questions about this course?

Ask about dates, fees, group bookings or running it for your team. Our training team replies by email.

Ask on WhatsApp info@skillsetdevelopment.com

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