Finance for Non Finance Professionals

This module sets out why financial oversight is a matter of stewardship: almost every board spends other people's money and must give an honest account of it. It covers the four financial duties every board holds, who does what on finance, the statutory section 151 officer and section 114 notice, five questions for any financial paper, and the Northamptonshire County Council case, where budgeting rested on hope rather than expectation.

This module builds the core vocabulary every board member needs to read accounts with confidence. It compares cash and accruals accounting, introduces the three financial statements and the accounting equation, and explores going concern, prudence, materiality and consistency. It covers revenue and capital budgets, depreciation, an illustrative community trust year, Goodhart's law and glossary terms such as provisions, contingent liabilities and EBITDA.

This module explores the income statement as the answer to one question: did we live within our means? It follows revenue through to net profit, compares the company profit and loss account, the charity SOFA and the council CIES, and explains the five-step income recognition model in FRS 102 and Charities SORP 2026. Through the Cwm Valley Trust example, it shows why a surplus is a result, not a verdict.

This module explains the balance sheet as a photograph of what an organisation owns and owes, and why net assets are not money in the bank. It sets out the four blocks, overlooked liabilities such as pensions, provisions and leases, charity funds from endowment to free reserves, and council usable and unusable reserves. Through the Bryn Care Trust example, it shows how a reserves policy becomes a concrete board control.

This module examines why profitable organisations still run out of money and how boards can see it coming. It covers why profit and cash diverge, the three sections of the cash flow statement, the working capital cycle, why growth eats cash, building a thirteen week cash forecast, and covenants and liquidity headroom. The University of Dundee case, drawn from the Gillies Report, shows how a liquidity and culture failure becomes a public crisis.

This module shows how companies, charities, councils, housing associations and NHS bodies report under different rulebooks while answering the same core questions. It compares company and charity accounts, sets out what Charities SORP 2026 changes, walks through the four core council statements and the gap between accounting deficit and budget position, and explains the four ingredients of housing association finance. It closes with a forty five minute route through any annual report.

This module treats a ratio as a question, not an answer. It covers four families of ratios: liquidity, solvency, resilience and performance, comparing the current ratio with days cash on hand and reading gearing alongside interest cover. It sets out a five-step discipline for ratio packs, a warning signs check for suppliers' accounts, and the Carillion collapse, where the parliamentary inquiry found the signals sat in plain view.

This module explores how judgement, incentives and fraud risk can shape the figures a board relies on. It covers four places numbers can bend, prudent versus aggressive accounting, Goodhart's law as restated by Marilyn Strathern, and Cressey's fraud triangle of pressure, opportunity and rationalisation. Through the Tesco 2014 and Wirecard cases, it sets out five practical board defences, including treating the challenger as information.

This module looks at external audit from the board's seat: what an audit tells you, what it cannot, and how boards get real value from their auditors. It covers true and fair, the expectation gap, the four audit opinions, going concern under ISA (UK) 570, key audit matters and management letters, private sessions with auditors, stalled reform of the FRC, and England's local audit backlog and backstop dates.

This module examines how costs behave and why that matters for board decisions. It sets out fixed, variable, semi-variable and stepped costs, contribution and break-even through an illustrative leisure centre, and the difference between average and marginal cost. Drawing on Arkes and Blumer's work on the sunk cost effect, it shows which costs belong in a decision and offers a six-step cost-literate decision cycle.

This module examines what services really cost once shared overheads are counted, and why that is a governance question. It compares absorption and marginal costing, shows how blunt allocation and averages distort, and sets out Cooper and Kaplan's activity-based costing and Kaplan and Anderson's time-driven version. It covers full cost recovery, building trustworthy unit costs with Goodhart's law in mind, and NHS patient-level costing.

This module explores value for money as the best use of resources rather than the cheapest option. It covers the National Audit Office's three Es with equity, Dupuit's cost benefit analysis, financial versus economic appraisal, optimism bias and HM Treasury's Green Book five-case model. Through the Institute for Fiscal Studies' Sure Start evidence it examines why prevention is so hard to fund, and it sets out the role of the Public Accounts Committee.

This module looks behind the budget papers boards are asked to approve. It compares incremental budgeting, described by Aaron Wildavsky, with Peter Pyhrr's zero-based budgeting and priority-based budgeting, including Osborne and Hutchinson's budgeting for outcomes, then examines rolling forecasts and Hope and Fraser's Beyond Budgeting, illustrated by Handelsbanken. Drawing on Anthony Hopwood, it sets out common budget games and a five-stage sequence for board engagement.

This module develops the skills to read budget monitoring reports with confidence. It explains why forecast outturn matters more than year to date, the five elements of a report, and how to split variances into price, volume and timing, one-off or recurring. It examines the RAG rating trap and savings delivery confidence, and uses Birmingham City Council's Oracle programme to show why reliable information matters.

This module examines capital decisions, which commit organisations for decades. It covers payback, net present value and whole-life cost, why every capital pound becomes a revenue promise, and the prudential framework for council borrowing: CIPFA's Prudential Code, Minimum Revenue Provision and the 2021 rule against borrowing for yield. Through the Woking, Thurrock and Luton cases and a risk and purpose matrix, it sets out how boards should govern commercial investment and owned companies.

This module explores how boards keep their organisation financially sound over time. It covers medium-term financial plans, sensitivity analysis and scenario planning, reserves matched to risk, section 114 of the Local Government Finance Act 1988, contingent liabilities and going concern. Drawing on Birmingham City Council's equal pay case, Northamptonshire, the University of Dundee and CIPFA's Financial Management Code and Resilience Index, it shows how resilience is built.

This capstone applies the whole topic to three cases from the public record: Croydon Council and Brick by Brick, Nottingham City Council and Robin Hood Energy, and the Co-operative Bank with Sir Christopher Kelly's review. Reading each through financial and governance lenses, it shows how failure arrives unasked about, and draws out six habits of financially confident boards, from following the cash to matching skills to risk.