What is the Importance of Financial Management in Your Business?

If you plan to go big with your business, you can never neglect the importance of Financial Management. It is an essential tool that is required to move ahead with your expansion plans. Generally, this critical aspect is disregarded because the entrepreneurs are unaware of its advantages and uses. Financial reports can help aid in making important future decisions. If you have a solo or micro business, then it is not imperative to make use of Financial Management. But as I mentioned earlier, if you plan to make it big in the world of business and commerce, you should make Financial Management your forte!

o Accounting and Financial Reports - It is very important to keep track of your company's origin and its past history, particularly an account of the money that has been spent. When you analyze the financial reports, you will be aware of all the spending and expenses accurately. The earnings from specific services, product lines and sales staff - all will come into clear focus once you have gone through the financial reports. This will help you to manage your expenses and marketing accordingly.

o Financial Ratios - These ratios gives you all the information that you need to know about your business. Moreover, it is very easy to calculate. This way you can compare your company's standard with others. Financial ratios are not essential but it can point out your faults.

o Research - A little bit of research on the expenses managed by other companies will help you manage yours better and your bottom line could increase. You might need to tweak the procedures, alter operations, streamline competencies or shake up the staff for a better performance. Analyzing the financial ratios will guide you towards the area you are most weak in so that you can develop a strategy to enhance the efficiency of your business.

o Financial Statements - All the patterns in your expenses are exposed with the help of Financial Statements. Sales Trends comes into attention whether impacted by the season, changing consumer taste or other factors. This helps you to manage your inventories better, staff levels and sales promotions. Variable expenses and unusual or unauthorized expenses can be monitored with the help of Financial Statements. This will aid you in occasions of theft, embezzlement or other questionable activity before the stakes become too high.

Economic highs and lows affect all companies and these periods of change is a test for all. Some stumble, some even fail and there are some who stand unscathed. But the economic growth of all companies is affected collectively. Sometimes the growth is totally unplanned and the expansion occurs due to some external factor which can range from landing a large account to just finding a great deal on a second location space. Always remember that without proper and concrete planning, no business can survive.

Financial planning and management is not only for reviewing the financial statements but also to be aware of your expenses and then manage them in such a way that they don't go waste. You can use it to fund your future realistic projects and help your business go big.

The Importance of Finance For Non-Financial Managers

There are companies who are willing to have their employees be enrolled in courses that can help them gain a better understanding of the different aspects of the business. In this way, they too can have a grasp of where other departments are coming from, especially during meetings with different departments. And there are actually courses that can help employees gain basic knowledge about different areas of the business. One example of this are courses on finance for non-financial managers. Non-financial managers can truly learn a lot from this kind of course, especially in terms of having a better understand of different financial concepts.

It can prove to be quite helpful for non-financial managers to have knowledge about finance and accounting, especially that these two areas are quite significant in any kind of business. Through a course on finance for non-financial managers, they would be able to better understand the different concepts of finance and accounting, and use the knowledge in these concepts to make better decisions for the company that involve finances. And it can be good to note that this kind of lessons is especially designed to help managers who do not have backgrounds in the fields of finance and accounting.

One can expect that while enrolled in this kind of course, one can be given a crash course on the basic concepts and terms involved in finance and accounting, including trial balancing, financial decision-making models, cash flows, fixed assets, depreciation, budgeting, and financial strategies. But there is no need to worry, especially those who do not have a basic knowledge of these terms and concepts because these courses are designed to be easily understandable by people who are quite new to the world of finance and accounting.

Finance for non-financial managers can be seen as a great way to improve the skills and abilities of non financial managers, especially if the company places much value on leadership that gets results. This kind of course can help equip non financial managers so they too can better understand what financial reports really mean.

Through having an understanding of reports made by accountants and financial experts, managers will be able to better interact during management meetings as they can now make comments that they believe would be helpful in improving the of work being delivered by accountants. In the same manner, they will also be able to foresee financial problems that might develop in the future, enabling them to develop control measures to so these problems can be avoided.

Financial Management and Budgeting in Business

Importance of Financial Management

Finance is a key functional area of business management. This area is commonly referred to as Financial Management. The term defines the achievement of key financial objectives by making investment and financial decisions. Essentially, it is the management of all the processes associated with the efficient acquisition and deployment of both short and long-term financial resources. Financial Management assists an organisation's management to reach its financial objectives such as the creation of wealth, solvency, liquidity, growth and return on investment achieved through a process of financial planning, control and decision-making.

Financial Control

Financial control consists of different strategies to manage finances necessary to achieve the primary purpose of every business; which is to earn profit. Budgets are the traditional financial control method and provide a measuring basis which performance can be assessed. By engaging in a yearly budgeting process a business can make plans and forecasts for the year ahead. Control action should be taken when actual performance appears not to be matching the outline of the budget. Therefore by monthly monitoring of expenses, controlling methods can be put into place when expenses becoming higher than figures stated in budget (such as spending cut backs or extra working hours). And by determining the reasons why figures do not match the yearly budget plan, a business can therefore make necessary plans for this not to occur in the future. Monthly monitoring of expenses is another example of a financial control. Such data includes cash balance, total wages costs and hours worked key sources of income, unusual or above budget expenditures.

Three Main Financial Statements

The 3 main financial statements necessary to analysis and improve on finance viability:

1) Balance sheet - 'A statement of financial position that shows the assets of a business and the claims on those assets'

2) Income Statement - 'A financial statement (also known as profit and loss account) that measures and reports the profit (or loss) the business has generated during a period.'

3) The cash flow statement - 'A statement that shows the sources and uses of cash for a period'

By analysing these three financial statements on a regular basis a business can proactively forecast problems or opportunities before they arise. The 3 main financial statements are also considered as financial controls as these statements are used to understand and interpret the financial conditions of a business as a means of management and control. The statements enable a business to set guidelines and policies that enable growth and business success. An annual Profit and Loss statement is considered the most important financial statement and UK businesses are legally required to lodge a Profit & Loss Account with Companies House. In regards to cash flow, cash inflows are payments for products or services and interest on savings and investments. Cash outflows are a combination of many things including purchasing stock, daily operating expenses, fixed assets and government taxes. A business is also required to produce a balance sheet annually for reporting purposes. It provides a report of assets or liabilities.

Budgeting and Budgetary Control

A budget as a qualified statement, for a defined period of time, which may include planned revenues, expenses, assets, liabilities and cash flows. It is a short-term plan of working towards financial objectives. There are several styles of budgeting, these styles include -

* Fixed - does not allow for variations

* Flexible - Adjusts or flexes

* Continuous or rolling - continually amended

* Zero-based - needs assessed

* Incremental - uses previous budget with increment

Budgets are necessary to provide a basis for control, helping identify short-term problems and promote forward thinking. However, there is a need for budgets to be adaptable if they become unrealistic due to sudden changes in the business environment. This is known as 'Flexing the Budget' (which simply means revising the budget).

A variance report is required to indicate whether performance is below or above the budgeted level. It is the difference between the budgeted level of costs and revenue and the actual levels of costs and revenues also referred to as variance analysis. Budgets can also have a behavioural effect motivating the management team and staff to achieve better performance and help promote forward thinking.

Effective Business Planning

A business plan is made up of many elements but no business plan is complete without this financial information. For business planning to be effective, the budget and the three main financial statements (Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet and the cash flow statement) must be taken into consideration. A financial statement is the core of a business plan as they are used to identify various business strategies. Financial planning is interlinked with all elements of a business plan. Five key strategic plans interlinked with a budget (plan); 1) establishing mission and objectives, 2) undertaking a position analysis, 3) identifying and assess the strategy options, 4) selecting strategic options, 5) perform, review and control. By taking all of these elements into considering, a business can create an effective business plan containing financial data and projections.

Leadership That Gets Results - Finance For Non-Financial Managers

Managers need to deal with several kinds of reports each day. And with all the different data they need to review, most non financial managers often feel perplexed at the mere sight of financial reports. To most non financial managers, fiscal reports speak their own language - a language that is quite unfamiliar to them. And without a strong finance background, they often find themselves overwhelmed with what these reports are showing. These conditions make learning finance for non-financial managers a must in any type of organization, especially if the organization places much value in a leadership that gets results.

It truly is vital for an organization that values leadership that gets results to have its non financial managers learn the financial side of things, in the same way that financial managers must also be aware of the other aspects of the organization other than their area. The good news is there are now several programs on finance for non-financial managers and they can prove to be quite helpful in making managers become aware of how the organizational finances can greatly impact the direction that their departments would take, and that of the organization as a whole.

Some might have the notion that courses on finance for non-financial managers are dreadfully boring. What these managers are not aware of are the different ways for one to get more knowledge in this area. There are of courses short courses on this topic, and there are also reading materials that managers can review at their own pace. There are also seminars and workshops that provide a more interactive form of learning.

Regardless of the form that the course is delivered, what is important is for participants to learn how to understand and speak the language of numbers. In this way, they can better relate to fiscal data they have to review everyday and they can better see how these can significantly impact the business decisions they make every single day. It is also important to have the program how and why fiscal decisions can significantly impact the organizational and operational goals and objectives.

It is quite important that organizational leaders and executive should not take finance for non-financial managers for granted. If they are after a leadership that gets results, this is something that they must support and they must encourage their people to learn more about it so they can start applying the valuable lessons to real world scenarios.