Managing the money
Cost, budgets, capital and financial resilience.
A half day on managing the money: how costs behave, testing business cases and budgets, governing borrowing, and recognising when the alarm should sound.
- Level
- Explore
- Learning time
- 5 hours 30 minutes
- 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 making forward-looking decisions about public money
Overview
This half-day programme turns to the forward-looking choices boards make with other people's money. It starts with cost: how costs behave, break-even, sunk costs, distorting overheads, Cooper and Kaplan's activity-based costing and NHS patient-level costing. Value and budgets come next: what the National Audit Office's three Es and equity ask of a proposal, Dupuit's cost benefit analysis, HM Treasury's Green Book, why prevention such as Sure Start is hard to fund, and budgeting beyond the incremental. Control and capital follow, with variances read against forecast outturn, the lessons of Birmingham City Council's Oracle programme, net present value, CIPFA's Prudential Code and the Woking and Thurrock cases. It ends with resilience, medium-term planning, scenarios and going concern, and a capstone on Croydon, Nottingham and the Co-operative Bank.
Aims
The aim is to equip leaders to judge which costs belong in a decision, test whether business cases, budgets and borrowing plans hold up under scrutiny, and recognise early when financial resilience is weakening and the board must act.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Compare costing approaches and judge which costs belong in a decision, so that services, bids and contracts recover their full cost fairly.
- Assess business cases, budgets and borrowing proposals for value for money, realistic assumptions and long-term affordability under the Prudential Code.
- Diagnose emerging financial risk through monitoring, scenario testing and reserves analysis, drawing on Croydon, Nottingham and the Co-operative Bank.
What you'll develop
Across this Explore, you will develop the ability to:
- Judge which costs belong in a decision, distinguishing marginal from average cost, excluding sunk costs and unchanged overheads, and including opportunity costs.
- Assess whether a bid, contract or unit cost recovers its full cost fairly, and who pays when it does not.
- Distinguish financial from economic appraisal, and use the five-case model to probe the assumptions in a business case.
- Analyse a variance into price, volume and timing, and decide which adverse or favourable variances deserve board time.
- Explain how borrowing becomes a revenue commitment, and how the Prudential Code and Minimum Revenue Provision keep it affordable.
- Assess your organisation's reserves, contingent liabilities and going concern position, and recognise the warning signs that precede a crisis.
Built from 4 parts.
5 hours 30 minutes of learning.
- 01What things really costCost behaviour, overheads and activity-based costingBitesize2 modules
- 02Value for money, budgets that workInvestment appraisal and budgeting approachesBitesize2 modules
- 03Keeping the budget honestBudget monitoring, capital and borrowingBitesize2 modules
- 04Built to lastFinancial resilience, with case studiesBitesize2 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, 5 hours 30 minutes, £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