Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Self Evaluation of Values and Experience gained from undertaking this assignment
Job Description for a Finance Director detailing responsibilities and duties for a typical FD role.
Working alongside a business’ MD or CEO, the Finance Director will not only be an exceptional
accountant and hands-on with company finances but will also be commercially aware, advising on the
The role of the Finance Director has overall control and responsibility for all financial aspects of
company strategy and is expected to analyse figures and implement recommendations based on
Often managing and leading a team through difficult periods including month end, year end and
annual budgeting, a Finance Director would have excellent communication skills with all levels of
staff, often having to work with various departments to help them plan and manage their own budgets.
In periods of change and growth an effective Finance Director is critical, coordinating corporate
finance and managing company policies regarding capital requirements, debt, taxation, equity and
acquisitions as appropriate.
FD duties and responsibilities
Form a close working relationship with the Managing Director, other Senior Executives and Non
Executives.
Provide leadership to the Board's Finance and Accounting strategy, to optimise the company’s
Contribute fully to the development of company strategy across all areas of the business, challenging
assumptions and decision-making as appropriate and providing financial analysis and guidance on all
Ensure that company financial systems are robust, compliant and support current activities and future
growth.
Work with senior teams to grow the business, formulating strategies and plans.
Ensure that the regulatory requirements of all statutory bodies are met.
Corporate finance: manage company policies regarding capital requirements, debt, taxation, equity,
Person Specification
Meet the requirement for a commercially astute, articulate, technically strong, dynamic, insightful and
influential leader with the ability to operate at both strategic and operational levels.
Energetic, highly motivated, with an enquiring mind and passion for excellence and innovation in
P1:
Finance is very important for the business. In every step of our life we need finance whether we want
to start a new business or want to buy something. For business we need finance from the starting of
the business.
the starting of the business to buy business assets, raw materials and to pay to the employee
2. Expansion: To make a competitive business and to develop business into next level finance
is very important to buy technology and other stuffs. Also if business wants to take over some
other business than it needs finance as well to expand the business. Sometimes business
needs to enter in new market so that they can expand their business and for the business
needs finance.
3. Development: There are competitions in every business, so to compete with the competitor
business needs to spend money on developing and marketing new products. Big
organisations spend millions of dollars every year in Research and Development purposes.
(http://kabraacademy.weebly.com/uploads/1/0/3/0/10302616/business_finance.pdf)
4. Running of the business: Business need money constantly to run it. Without the finance it is
5. During trouble time: Business always needs to keep money as a financial security so that in
Finance sources:
Internal sources:
1. Sales of assets
2. Retained profit
3. Reducing stocks
4. Trade credit
External sources:
1. Share capital
2. Bank lending
3. Venture capital
5. Government finance
6. Franchising
P2:
1. Personal Savings: Personal savings are individual own money, which they earn from outside
source. When a business seeks to borrow the personal money of a shareholder, partner or
owner for a business’s financial needs the source of finance is known as personal savings.
2. Sales assets: By selling its assets such as property, fixtures, fittings, machinery, vehicles etc
business can generate finance. Normally those are short-term source of finance. Land &
property could be long time source of finance because those are very valuable.
3. Retained profit: If business make profit from the business, in the end of the financial
calendar year business can keep those profit and use it in business as a new source of
finance.
4. Reducing stock: Stock includes raw materials, finished or semi-finish products and also all
the unsold products. Most of the time business always holds their stocks because of the
unexpected increase of demand from the customers. So in the time, when business needs
money they can sell their stocks and gives business short-term finance.
5. Trade credit: Trade credit is very important and useful short term finance. Most of the time
business doesn’t have to pay the bill when they receive the goods, sometimes they can pay
6. Share capital: limited companies can issues new shares and from those shares they can
7. Bank lending: For business finance Business also play a very important role. Bank provides
short-term or long-term loans to the business. Short-term loan is like overdraft, where bank
agrees to provide some limited amount of money for few days or months and bank charge a
variable fee for that. Long term long are like business needs money for the business and they
can take loan from the bank for 3, 5 or maybe for 10 years. Sometimes for those kinds of loan
bank charge a fixed rate and also sometimes they ask for guarantee.
8. Venture capital: Lots of individual investor gathered together and they invest their money in
9. Leasing and hire purchase: Sometimes business to save their finance they lease the
equipment from different company or place for certain period of time. So, instead of paying for
Hire purchase means business pay for the product or equipment by instalment. In hire
10. Government finance: Government provides finance to different kind of company to improve
economy.
11. Franchising: Franchising method is franchisor give the right to franchisee to use their name
P3
Retained profit:
Advantages;
Organisation do not have to pay back those money because that’s business own money
Organisations also do not have to any kind of interest for the usage of retained profit.
Disadvantages;
Retained profit is not available for new business or the businesses that are making losses.
Sale of assets:
Advantages;
Businesses do not have to pay back the money because funds are raised by the business.
Disadvantages;
Capital:
Advantages;
No repayment is needed
Disadvantages;
Share capital:
Advantages;
If company make profit that’s the only time company have to pay dividends
Disadvantages;
There are possible chance of takeover if investor buy more than 50% of share
Bank overdraft:
Advantages;
Interest only have to pay so business excess the agreed overdraft limit
Disadvantages;
Bank loan:
Advantages;
Only have to pay back in fixed time period and bank can not cancel the loan amount
Personal Savings:
Advantages;
No paperwork required
No or less interest fee because business owner using his own saving money for the business
Disadvantages;
When very large amount of money required personal saving is not an option
Debentures:
Advantages;
Debentures holders do not have the right to vote in company general meetings
Tax benefits
Disadvantages;
The money borrowed has to pay back on the agreed time or date
Hire purchase:
Advantages;
Company does not have to pay full amount at a time
Disadvantages;
In instalment company pay more money for the product than original value
Company does not own the asset until last payment has been made
If company do not pay the instalment on time, lender has the right to repossess the asset
P4
1. Sale of assets: If business sales their fixed assets and still sometime they need to use that
asset for business production purpose, than this will stop their production or business need to
stop that particular production. On other if that asset is abandon or business does not need to
2. Retained profit: In retained profit, if business didn’t keep that money for any other purposes
5. Share capital: Business need to pay dividend to the shareholder from the profit as return of
their investment. There are administrative costs occurring from issuing shares like stock
exchange listing fee, printing and distribution fee and advertising fee.
(http://www.scribd.com/doc/27126810/Sources-of-Finance)
6. Bank Landing: For bank short term overdrafts and loans bank charge fixed interest rate and
7. Hire purchase: In hire purchase business pay more money than normal purchase because
8. Franchising: Franchising is very safe because business always do have a agreement with
franchiser that they need to follow all rules and regulations and also need to maintain quality.
9. Government finance: In government finance most of the time government give finance to the
Financial planning is very important for any small or big business. It is one of the important business
elements for success. It is believed that financial planning is the backbone of a successful business
since if a company runs without it the company will lose its financial grip. Financial Planning is
process of framing objectives, policies, procedures, programmes and budgets regarding the financial
1. Income: It is possible to manage income effectively through planning. The amount of income
earned part of income goes for tax payment, expenditure and the left amount is savings.
2. Cash flow: Financial planning helps to increase in cash flow as well as helps to monitoring the
spending pattern.
3. Capital: Strong capital helps business to invest more money in business portfolio and
4. Investment: Financial planning can help to evaluate best investment opportunities. A good
investment planning can turn dreams goals into realities. Good financial planning can help to
5. Family security: Financial planning is very important from the point of view of family security.
Those days are gone now when worker used to retired with good pension. Now everyone
needs to think about their family and need to plan their finance according to that.
6. Standard of living: A very good financial planning is very important, so that in hard or bad
7. Savings: Financial planning is very important on savings. Savings account is very helpful in
8. Assets: Financial planning helps to find out the real value of the asset. Some asset comes
with liabilities. The overall process helps to build assets that don't become a burden in the
future. (http://www.buzzle.com/articles/importance-of-financial-planning.html)
P6:
Decision making is very important in our day to day personal and business life. Good decision plays
an important role in business and personal success. Decision making is the selection of a course of
action from different scenario. To make any decision information is very important. If business do not
have any information about particular product or their competitor than it will be quite impossible for
them to make any decision on those particular sectors. In every sector or every decision making
information in decision making can create bad decision in leadership. In leadership all the
leaders make their decision on the base of the information they do have.
making. Managers are the responsible for making plan into action and they are also
responsible for production and staff. For all those managers need lots of information, because
information business cannot make any plan or any decision. Any organisation or business
always needs the information about their competitor, their products and also about their
customers. That information helps the organisation or business to make better decisions. In
business information is needed for all kind o decision making. In business organisation try to
find information about the products, their employees, their competitor and they also try to find
the information about their supplier. Those information is needed so that organisation can
make a decision about what kind of product they should introduce, who to target for their
product, also to find more about their competitor so that they can make some decision about
how they can compete with them. Information also about their supplier helps them to make a
P7:
Financial statement: Financial statements are basically the formal records of financial activities of a
1. Income statement
2. Balance sheet
Income statement: It is also known as profit and loss account. It is a financial statement that
evaluates the company’s performance over an accounting period of time. The income statement
shows the net results of business operations. Various source of finance appears in income statement
are;
Net sales: The first item appears in income statement is nest or total sales of the business. In
net sales business includes all of its sales. Like for the whole year business made a total sale
of 5million and each of item sales prices is £2.50, so total sale is £12.5 million. If business has
any refund or return for the product than they need to minus it from total sales and the
Cost of goods sold: Cost of goods sold is the total cost of the product production. Like
company produce total of 6million product and each product cost them £1 to produce so total
cost of the goods are £6million. Costs of goods made by the business include material,
Gross margins: Gross margin is the differences between the net sales and cost of goods sold.
Like business net sale is £12.5 million – cost of goods sold £6million so gross margins is
£6.5million.
Service and other income: Service incomes are income from delivery of the product or income
Operating expenses: Operating expenses includes bad debts, interests, depreciations and
labour costs.
Employee expenses: Employee expenses included salaries, wages, and benefits such as
subscriptions, directors’ fees and expenses, annual meetings, meetings and travel, office
General expenses: General expenses includes advertising and promotion, property, business
and other taxes and licenses, rent , plant supplies and repairs, repairs and maintenance,and
other.
Income taxes: Business has to pay income taxes from their income.
Balance sheet: Balance sheet shows organisation or business assets and liabilities.
Current assets: Current assets are all the assets that businesses do have currently now.
Current assets are like cash, account receivables, prepaid expenses etc.
Fixed assets: Fixed assets are like property, plant, equipment etc.
Current liabilities: Current liabilities are like long or short term debt, bank loans, accurate
Budgeting:
Capital budgeting or investment appraisal is the planning process used to determine whether an
organization's long term investments are worth pursuing. It is budget for major capital, or investment,
expenditures.
Many formal methods are used in capital budgeting, including the techniques such as
Payback period
Profitability index
Equivalent annuity
These methods use the incremental cash flows from each potential investment, or project. Budget
helps to aid the planning of actual operations by forcing managers to consider how the conditions
might change and what steps should be taken now and by encouraging managers to consider
Budgeting is very important for the business because it helps organisation to make a very important
decision about the investment. Budgeting helps the organisation to know how much they will make
profit and also about other factors. Budgeting help organisation to make better future investment
decision because through budgeting business will be able to identify the entire project and also it will
help business to know the investment will be profitable or not and also will help them to find out how
long it will take to make the decisions. Financial decisions are based on budgeting because;
Provide a forecast of revenues and expenditures, that is, construct a model of how business
might perform financially if certain strategies, events and plans are carried out.
Enable the actual financial operation of the business to be measured against the forecast.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget)
P9:
Unit cost: In business environment unit cost is very important. Unit cost helps the business to know
about the total cost of the production of the particular product or item. To calculate the cost per unit
first business need to find out it fixed cost which is like property, rent, labour cost etc. Fixed costs are
the cost which is fixed and in no matter business produce more products or less but those cost will be
fixed. Than business needs to find out its variable cost like deprecation etc and variable cost always
varies according to the production. So, unit cost is fixed cost + variable cost, divided by the number of
unit business produce. Example, business produce 100 units of product and its fixed cost is £1000
and variable cost is £1200, so total cost is £2200. The business unit cost is £2200/100 =£22 per unit.
So, business unit cost is £22 and unit cost is very important because it helps the business or
organisation to make a decision about their profit or loss for that particular product. Unit cost also
In pricing decision making unit cost is very important as well. Pricing is very important for organisation
or business. Pricing is how much organisation or business wants to charge a particular product or
service. To make a pricing decision unit cost is very important because it tells the organisation or
business that what price they should charge for that particular product or service. Unit price helps the
organisation or business to make a particular decision of whether they want to make profit or loss. If
one particular product price is more than its unit cost than business makes profit, on the other hand if
it is less than the unit cost than business make loss. So, unit cost is very important for business profit
and loss.
To make a pricing decision business always need to follow unit cost because it is give them the idea
of where they want to go and what they want to achieve. Unit cost helps business to know the exact
cost for the product and they also can compare the product with their competitor product and then
according to unit cost business decide what amount of money they will charge for that particular
product or services.
From example, we can see that the unit cost for the product is £22, so if organisation decides they
want to make profit and also can give very good competition to their competitor than they are going to
charge the price for the product more than £22. That will give them profit for that product and also if
business charges less than that they will make a loss. So, to make a proper pricing decision which
can help business to make profit than unit cost is very important for the business to know.
P10.
Payback period:
Year 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
0 -$1000 -$1000
1 $200 -$800
2 $200 -$600
3 $200 -$400
4 $200 -$200
5 $200 $0
6 $200 $200
So, we can see that the payback period is year 5, because that is the breakeven point. Before year 5
Easy to understand
DISADVANTAGES
Rate of return:
ADVANTAGES
DISADVANTAGES
NPV is;
NPV _____________________________
$16
IRR:
NPV at 6%
$200* 0.9434 =$189
So we can say that IRR rate is less than 6%, guess it is 5.5%
From all above calculation we can see that all the result are positive, that means it is a profitable
Review of financial statement: Financial statement review means obtains limited assurance that no
material modification that need to be made after review or check the balance sheet and income
statement. In financial statement review the main thing that need to check are all the entry of balance
sheet and income statement. In a financial statement review, the accountant performs those
procedures necessary to provide a reasonable basis for obtaining limited assurance that no material
changes are needed to bring the financial statements into compliance with the applicable financial
reporting framework.
Balance sheet: In financial statement balance sheet equation is Asset=liabilities + equity. To review
balance sheet first need to review the asset and liabilities and also equity.
Asset: Review asset by checking the financial value allocated to cash, receivables, short-term and
long-term investments, inventory, fixed assets, furniture and fixtures, land and building.
Liability: Review of liability means checking balances of the accounts payables, bills payables, notes
payables and all other payables and make sure all amount are placed correctly with proof.
Equity: In balance sheet review in equity means checking equity account, number of stocks, common
In balance sheet also check are there any unusual balances, such as:
Negative amounts
Inventory – amount should vary from month-to-month according to actual inventory levels
youre-a-finance-notatall)
Income statement:
Sales should be greater than cost of goods sold for each category
(http://biznik.com/articles/how-to-review-financial-statements-like-a-finance-knowitall-even-if-
youre-a-finance-notatall)
P12
One of the most effective ways to compare two businesses is to perform a ratio analysis on each
company’s financial statements. The main steps of comparing financial statement are;
Step 1: Ensure that both financial statements have been audited or at the very least prepared by a
neutral, third-party accounting firm, to help ensure the integrity and accuracy of the reported numbers.
Step 2: Compare the statements such as the profit and loss to see if the results are reported in a
similar fashion. For example, net sales are usually reported as gross sales, less customer discounts,
whereas some companies report net sales as gross sales, less discounts, and cost of goods sold. If
this is the case, need to adjust one statement so that it matches the reporting method of the other
statement.
Step 3: Perform a ratio analysis on some of the key components of the statements. There are many
types of ratios but compare the most important one like net profit ratio by taking net, pre-tax profit
shown near the bottom of the profit and loss and dividing it by the nets sales. The other important ratio
is the return on assets ratio by dividing the net, pre-tax profit by the total assets shown on the balance
sheet. This ratio helps determine how profitable a company’s operation is based on its own assets,
Step 4: Compare the various ratios of each company to see which is more or less profitable or
efficient in its operation. If the businesses are dependent on large machinery in their operations, than
need to look closely at ratios that focus on assets. On the other hand if the business relates more on
commission- sales based on service, than look closer at payroll to sales-related ratios.
(http://smallbusiness.chron.com/compare-financial-statements-between-businesses-24903.html)
P13
Ratio for profitability: Profitability ratios are not same as profit. It shows how profitable is the
The higher gross profit margin is the better. If it is raising the business will be receiving more gross
Net profit margin 28.57% means for every $1 business invest it makes a profit of 28p.
Liquidity ratios: Liquidity ratios measure how easily business can pay off its debts. Liquidity assets
are those that are held in cash form or can be turn is cash very quickly whenever business needs.
It means for every $100 debt business have $216 assets to pay off the debt, which shows very strong
Acid test ratios: cash + debtor/current liabilities = 7000 + 3000 /6000 = 1.67
Efficiency ratio: Those ration look at the enternal workings of the firm.
This means that each $1 fixed asset generate sales revenue of $1.4
Asset turnover: Sales revenue/total assets = 7000/18000 = 0.39, that means business generate 39p
Stock turnover: stock*365/cost of sales = 10000*365/5000 = 730, that means 730days the average
Investment ratio:
Current ration: current assets*100/current liabilities = 13000*100/6000 =216.67%
Bibliography
1. http://www.kewdstockanalytics.com/knowledge-center/investment-ratios.html
2. http://smallbusiness.chron.com/compare-financial-statements-between-businesses-
24903.html
3. http://biznik.com/articles/how-to-review-financial-statements-like-a-finance-knowitall-even-if-
youre-a-finance-notatall
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget
5. http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/rbs/pub/rr154.pdf
6. http://www.buzzle.com/articles/importance-of-financial-planning.html
7. http://www.pppnetwork.com/?
view=The_Importance_Of_Financial_Planning&mid=1563&mid=1563
8. http://www.scribd.com/doc/27126810/Sources-of-Finance)
9. http://www.fao.org/docrep/W4343E/w4343e08.htm
10. http://tutor2u.net/business/gcse/finance_why_needed.htm
11. http://kabraacademy.weebly.com/uploads/1/0/3/0/10302616/business_finance.pdf