Financial Management, Step by Step for 2027

For managers who can read the accounts but need to act on them: diagnose performance, free cash from working capital, appraise investments and choose the right funding.

Who it's for

For owners, directors and managers who carry real financial responsibility: you sign off investments, talk to the bank, answer to a board or run a profit centre. The book assumes you can already read a profit and loss account and a balance sheet.

What you'll learn

• Calculate the four families of financial ratios – profitability, liquidity, efficiency and gearing – from your own accounts or any company’s accounts filed at Companies House.
• Break return on equity into margin, asset turnover and financial leverage with DuPont analysis, developed by Donaldson Brown at DuPont, and add return on capital employed.
• Measure your cash conversion cycle and set deliberate policies for customer credit, stock and supplier terms.
• Build a simple activity-based cost model, the approach developed by Robin Cooper and Robert Kaplan, to see which products and customers really make money.
• Build a driver-based model that links profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow, and test it with checks and scenarios.
• Appraise investments with payback, accounting rate of return, net present value and internal rate of return, then compare debt and equity and estimate your weighted average cost of capital in plain terms.
• Size liquidity, credit, currency and interest rate risk, and put core internal controls and a Companies House and HMRC compliance calendar in place.

What's inside

• 64 pages, 9 chapters
• Every chapter follows the same pattern: key concepts, a step-by-step method, an illustrative example from a fictional UK organisation, a ready-to-use tool, common mistakes, key steps and a “Try it” exercise
• Tools include a ratio analysis template, DuPont analysis worksheet, working capital dashboard, activity-based costing sheet, financial model structure template, NPV and IRR worksheet, funding options comparison, financial exposure map and internal controls map with compliance calendar
• UK notes on late payment, tax, funding and filing, given as general guidance
• A 30-60-90 day action plan with checklists, plus a glossary
• PDF in A4 format — read on screen or print
• Instant download after purchase

Contents

1. Analysing Performance with Ratios
2. Finding the Drivers with DuPont Analysis
3. Managing Working Capital
4. Costing Products, Services and Customers
5. Building an Integrated Financial Model
6. Appraising Investment Decisions
7. Funding the Business
8. Managing Financial Risk
9. Financial Controls and Year-End Compliance

Part of The Business Library

This title is one of the 55 ebooks in The Business Library, available together for £109 (worth £1,437 if bought separately: the total of the individual prices of the included titles in our store). It is also included in The Ultimate Business Bundle, which adds 8 checklists and toolkits and 10 workbooks — all 73 products for £147.