Working Capital and Cash Flow Management Fundamentals Training Course

Course overview

Working capital failures rarely begin with a lack of profit. They emerge when receivables are collected too slowly, inventory accumulates beyond demand, supplier terms are unmanaged, or cash forecasts are based on assumptions no one has tested. Finance professionals need to explain these drivers in operational terms, quantify the cash tied up in the cash conversion cycle, and intervene before a liquidity gap becomes a borrowing or payment problem.

This five-day course develops the practical techniques used to manage short-term liquidity and working capital. Participants calculate and interpret liquidity, efficiency and cash conversion metrics; build rolling direct-method cash forecasts; analyse receivables ageing, inventory turns and payables terms; and assess the cash impact of credit, purchasing and inventory decisions. The programme also addresses funding choices, covenant awareness, cash-flow statement analysis and the controls required to protect daily cash visibility.

Teaching combines instructor-led financial analysis with spreadsheet-based exercises, operational case studies and management reporting workshops. Participants work from a realistic company dataset to diagnose working capital issues, model improvement scenarios and prioritise actions by cash impact and implementation risk. They leave with a completed working capital improvement pack: a 13-week cash forecast, KPI dashboard, receivables and inventory action plan, and a management presentation suitable for adaptation in their own organisation.

The course is suited to finance and accounting professionals who already work with budgets, management accounts or transactional finance data and now need a more rigorous command of liquidity management. It is equally valuable for operational managers whose decisions on customer terms, stock levels, purchasing and payment timing affect the organisation's cash position.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Calculate the cash conversion cycle using days sales outstanding, days inventory outstanding and days payables outstanding
• Build a 13-week direct-method cash-flow forecast from receivables, payables, payroll and operational assumptions
• Analyse receivables ageing reports to prioritise collections actions and quantify overdue-cash exposure
• Evaluate inventory turnover, safety-stock and replenishment decisions for their working-capital impact
• Assess supplier payment terms, early-payment discounts and payment-run timing using cost-versus-cash analysis
• Prepare a working capital KPI dashboard with liquidity, efficiency and forecast-accuracy measures
• Reconcile operating cash flow to profit using non-cash items and working-capital movements
• Produce a prioritised working capital improvement plan with owners, cash targets and implementation milestones

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Financial Analysts — who need to translate trading and balance-sheet data into actionable cash insights
• Management Accountants — who support budget holders and need to explain the cash consequences of operating decisions
• Treasury Analysts — who prepare short-term liquidity forecasts and monitor funding requirements
• Accounts Receivable Managers — who must improve collections performance without damaging customer relationships
• Accounts Payable Managers — who manage supplier terms, payment runs and cash-control procedures
• Operations and Supply Chain Managers — who influence inventory levels, purchasing commitments and cash tied up in stock

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should be comfortable reading an income statement, balance sheet and basic cash-flow statement, and should understand common terms such as revenue, gross margin, accounts receivable, accounts payable, inventory and accruals. Experience using Microsoft Excel for formulas, sorting, filtering and simple charts is assumed; participants will work with spreadsheet models during the course. This is an intermediate fundamentals course: prior treasury experience, advanced financial modelling, Power BI expertise and knowledge of IFRS technical disclosures are not required. A complete beginner to financial statements should first gain basic accounting literacy before attending.

Training methodology

The instructor introduces each tool through short, worked finance examples before participants apply it to a connected business case in Microsoft Excel. Teams examine customer ageing, stock records, supplier terms and weekly cash movements, then defend their proposed interventions against service, margin and relationship constraints. Facilitated discussions compare alternative policies for credit, inventory and payments. On the final day, participants consolidate their models into a working capital improvement pack and receive structured feedback on forecast logic, KPI selection and management messaging.

Course outline

Day 1: Working capital drivers and liquidity diagnosis

• Operating cycle, cash conversion cycle and liquidity risk
• Balance-sheet classification of current operating assets and liabilities
• Current ratio, quick ratio and operating cash-flow ratio calculations
• Days sales outstanding, days inventory outstanding and days payables outstanding
• Linking revenue growth, margin and working-capital investment
• Working-capital seasonality and timing mismatches
• Diagnosing cash pressure from management accounts and balance-sheet trends

Workshop: Participants calculate liquidity and cash conversion metrics for a case company and produce a one-page diagnosis of its principal cash constraints.

Day 2: Cash forecasting and cash-flow statement analysis

• Direct-method versus indirect-method cash-flow forecasting
• Cash-flow statement structure under IAS 7
• Reconciliation of profit to operating cash flow
• Receipts forecasting from sales, invoicing and collection patterns
• Payment forecasting for suppliers, payroll, tax and capital expenditure
• 13-week rolling cash forecast design in Microsoft Excel
• Base case, downside case and forecast-accuracy variance analysis

Workshop: Participants build a 13-week direct-method cash forecast and test the effect of delayed collections and an unexpected inventory purchase.

Day 3: Receivables and credit control

• Credit policy components and customer credit-risk assessment
• Receivables ageing analysis and collection-priority segmentation
• Dispute management and root-cause coding for overdue invoices
• Collection effectiveness index and overdue-debt KPIs
• Customer payment terms, billing accuracy and electronic invoicing controls
• Early-payment discounts and the annualised cost of discounting
• Bad-debt provisioning and expected credit loss awareness under IFRS 9

Workshop: Participants use an aged-debt ledger to create a collections escalation plan, quantify recoverable cash and recommend credit-control actions.

Day 4: Inventory, payables and short-term funding

• Inventory turnover, days inventory outstanding and slow-moving stock analysis
• Safety stock, reorder points and demand-variability trade-offs
• ABC inventory classification and cycle-counting priorities
• Purchase order commitments and goods-received-not-invoiced exposure
• Supplier term negotiation and payment-run scheduling
• Early-payment discount evaluation against borrowing costs
• Overdrafts, revolving credit facilities and covenant monitoring

Workshop: Participants compare inventory reduction, supplier-term extension and short-term borrowing scenarios and recommend the best cash-impact mix.

Day 5: Working capital governance and improvement planning

• Working capital KPI dashboard design in Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Power BI
• Cash forecast governance, data ownership and update cadence
• Forecast bias, data-quality checks and exception reporting
• Working capital target setting by business unit and customer segment
• Cash-release initiative sizing, sequencing and implementation risk
• Cross-functional accountability with sales, procurement and operations
• Management presentation of liquidity risks, actions and expected cash benefits

Workshop: Participants complete and present a working capital improvement pack containing a cash forecast, KPI dashboard, initiative register and 90-day action plan.

Tools & standards covered

Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power BI, IAS 7 Statement of Cash Flows, IFRS 9 Financial Instruments

A typical training day

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

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions