Manage Your Business Finances

Bookkeeping & Accounting
We focus on the essential books and records that the business should maintain for financial control and for generating accurate and reliable accounts, by looking at the business cycles. This course is geared towards entrepreneurs who wish to acquire basic bookkeeping and accounting skills. This helps in ensuring all the financial transactions are captured and recorded in a way that makes it easy to compile and generate business accounts. It’s also a useful course for CPA students/graduates looking to enter the job market or who those who have started their first job with little or no practical experience.

Understanding financial statements

The primary purpose of a commercial business is to make a profit! Is your business making a profit? You need to check and answer this question on a monthly basis or at least once a quarter. It’s important that you track your business income and expenses and prepare an accurate and reliable profit and loss account to aid in your decision-making process. The second most important thing to keep a close eye on is cash. You could be making a profit but still find yourself unable to run the business because you are cash-strapped. Cash is king and this should be monitored on a regular basis; sometimes daily or weekly depending on the nature of business and prevailing circumstances. Thirdly, you need to keep track of your business assets and liabilities to determine the financial position. Is the business over-leveraged i.e. the liabilities far exceed the assets? Are the business assets underutilised? Such questions can only be answered
from a reliable Statement of Financial Position formerly known as the balance sheet.

Interpreting financial statements for decision making
We explore what business numbers reveal and how that knowledge can be used to make better financial decisions through analysis of trends and basic ratios. We answer questions such as; Is the business profitable? Are the costs too high? Are the assets generating sufficient returns? Does the business have enough capital?

Developing financial plans
Preparing financial budgets and cash flow forecasts as well as tracking and monitoring actual performance against budgets.

Compliance
We undertake a high-level review of compliance in the areas of Taxes (including VAT, PAYE and Corporation/Income tax). We also examine the basic legal and statutory compliance requirements like licences, statutory contributions (NHIF, NSSF, NITA), annual returns, employment and business contracts.