Course description

This module is designed to provide business managers with a thorough grounding in a variety of financial and management accounting techniques that they may experience within a practical context. Students will be introduced to published financial statements and given the opportunity to interpret the statements and critically evaluate their usefulness for measuring performance. The module includes coverage of strategic management accounting and the construction of computerised financial planning models. Students will examine the formulation and evaluation of the outcome of active budgets. Linked to the budget process is the knowledge of cost behaviour and, in consequence, the module will discuss the nature of costs and introduce students to costing concepts and techniques. Finally students will cover aspects of financial management which will include cost of capital calculations and discounted cashflow techniques applied to investment appraisal. Value-based management and various methods of valuing the entire equity of a company will be explored and evaluated and the link to company performance will be demonstrated.

Learning outcomes

On completion of the module students will be able to:

1. Critically review the qualitative and quantitative content of corporate annual reports and the usefulness of the financial statements.
2. Compute and critically evaluate corporate financial performance using ratio analysis
3. Analyse budgetary processes, structures and concepts.
4. Formulate and construct budgets within various business settings.
5. Describe and analyse the different elements of cost and use of a range of costing systems.
6. Use standard costing and variance analysis to evaluate budgetary performance and control.
7. Calculate cost of capital and use this to appraise alternative investment proposals using discounted cash flow techniques
8. Compute and evaluate the entire equity in a company using different methods of valuation.br />

• Teacher: Bill Wright