Financial literacy for leaders
Reading accounts, ratios and external audit.
A half day building financial literacy for leaders: why money is a board responsibility, how to read the main statements, and what ratios and audit really show.
- Level
- Explore
- Learning time
- 6 hours
- Where
- Finance for Non Finance Professionals
- Price
- £129
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Read the full terms
Certificate of Completion, or Certificate of Completion and Assessment with a short assessment
Overview and Outcomes.
Who It's For
Leaders and board members across public services building confidence with accounts
Overview
This half-day programme treats finance as a language anyone can learn. It opens with why money is the whole board's responsibility, the section 151 officer's statutory role, five plain questions for any paper and the budgeting built on hope at Northamptonshire County Council. It then covers the language and the three statements: cash and accruals, what a surplus really means through the Cwm Valley Trust, reserves through the Bryn Care Trust, and cash flow, with the University of Dundee as a warning. The third stage reads across sectors, comparing five rulebooks and four families of ratios alongside the Carillion collapse. It closes with the limits of the figures: Tesco and Wirecard, Goodhart's law and Cressey's fraud triangle, and external audit from true and fair to England's local audit backlog.
Aims
This programme aims to develop leaders who read the main financial statements in any sector with confidence, spot warning signs as trends rather than single figures, and understand what an audit opinion does and does not tell the board.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Explain the board's financial duties and read an income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement in companies, charities, councils and NHS bodies.
- Apply ratios as trends and a warning signs check to identify financial risk in your own organisation and in its suppliers or partners.
- Assess the reliability of reported figures by challenging key judgements, recognising fraud risk and interpreting external audit opinions correctly.
What you'll develop
Across this Explore, you will develop the ability to:
- Apply five plain questions to any financial paper, testing income security, true cost, risk, cash timing and assumptions with professional scepticism rather than cynicism.
- Use a structured reading order, from trend and quality of income to exceptional items and adjusted measures, to question a reported surplus or deficit.
- Assess whether reserves are too little, too much or about right against risk, and set out what a defensible reserves policy should contain.
- Use a thirteen week cash forecast, working capital measures and liquidity headroom to find the low point and test a delayed income scenario.
- Apply a five-step discipline of define, trend, compare, set limits and ask to turn a ratio pack into board questions.
- Distinguish unmodified, qualified, adverse and disclaimed opinions, and interpret going concern disclosures, key audit matters and management letters.
Built from 4 parts.
6 hours of learning.
- 01Did we live within our means?The language of finance and the income statementBitesize3 modules
- 02Reserves and cashThe balance sheet, reserves and cash flowBitesize2 modules
- 03Reading between the linesReading accounts and spotting warning signsBitesize2 modules
- 04When the numbers misleadCreative accounting and external auditBitesize2 modules
Keep going.
Part of the Finance for Non Finance Professionals topic, also sold whole as Follow the money.
Go deeper, and pay only the difference
- You are hereExplore, 6 hours, £129
- The whole topicImmerse, Follow the money, 11 hours, £249. Already own the Explore? You pay £120.
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Prices per person. Read the full terms
Also part of: Governing the money