Numbers that tell the truth
Ratios, audit, cost and value for money.
Around four hours on figures that are accurate yet misleading: reading accounts across sectors, using ratios and audit well, and understanding what services really cost.
- Level
- Focus
- Learning time
- 4 hours
- Where
- Finance for Non Finance Professionals
- Price
- £69
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
Board and audit committee members who want to test the numbers they receive
Overview
This Focus explores how to tell when accurate numbers are telling the full story. It begins with reading accounts across companies, charities, councils, housing associations and NHS bodies, then four families of ratios read as trends, with the Carillion collapse as the warning. It moves to challenge: prudent and aggressive accounting, Goodhart's law as restated by Marilyn Strathern, Cressey's fraud triangle and the Tesco and Wirecard cases, followed by external audit from the board's seat, the four audit opinions and England's local audit backlog. It ends with cost: fixed, variable and stepped costs, break-even, Arkes and Blumer on sunk costs, Cooper and Kaplan's activity-based costing and full cost recovery.
Aims
This programme aims to strengthen the board's capacity for informed challenge: turning ratios into questions, recognising where judgement or incentives may bend the figures, getting real value from external audit, and knowing which costs belong in a decision.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Use ratios read as trends, alongside a structured route through the annual report, to turn financial figures into sharp board questions.
- Apply practical board defences against misleading numbers, and work with external auditors to understand what an audit opinion does and does not say.
- Assess the true cost of a service, bid or decision, separating relevant costs from sunk costs and recognising who pays when overheads go unrecovered.
What you'll develop
Through this Focus course, you will build the ability to:
- Apply a structured route through an annual report, testing the narrative front half against the audit report, statements and key notes.
- Apply a five-step discipline of define, trend, compare, set limits and ask to turn a ratio pack into board questions.
- Apply five practical board defences, from naming the key judgements to protecting the voices of those who raise concerns.
- Plan how your audit committee works with the auditor through the year, including private sessions, and judge the significance of local audit backstop disclaimers.
- 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.
Built from 3 parts.
4 hours of learning.
- 01Reading between the linesReading accounts and spotting warning signsBitesize2 modules
- 02When the numbers misleadCreative accounting and external auditBitesize2 modules
- 03What things really costCost behaviour, overheads and activity-based costingBitesize2 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 hereFocus, 4 hours, £69
- The whole topicImmerse, Follow the money, 11 hours, £249. Already own the Focus? You pay £180.
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