Finance and Accounting for the Nonfinancial Executive™

In five days of hands-on, interactive sessions, Finance and Accounting for the Non-financial Executive provides you with a unique opportunity to deepen your expertise of finance and accounting for better management and decision-making capabilities.

The program features sessions on the role of accounting, key concepts of managerial and financial accounting, ratio calculation, and analysis of your company and shareholder value management.

A hallmark of this program that is unmatched in other Executive Education programs is the Corporate Financial Analysis, a hands-on detailed financial analysis of your company, or a company of your choosing with the help of faculty coaches. The analysis results in a customized financial profile that summarizes how the specific business is doing. Faculty coaches help you read this profile on different levels, discuss the importance of each number for your business and be able to tell how your business is doing based on the figures, assessing strengths and areas for improvements.

At the end of the program, you will have mastered key finance and accounting concepts and understand the relationships among profitability, cash flow, liquidity and growth, and identify the red flags in financial statements -- highly important in the current volatile financial context.

Impact
This course blends broad financial principles with practical applications.

How You Will Benefit in the Current Context
Participants report appreciating the thoroughness of the program: rigorous, but rewarding. The personal attention participants receive from faculty brings concepts into clearer focus more readily and helps participants quickly gain confidence in their new finance and accounting skills.

Summary of Benefits:

• Understand accounting's role in business and master the language of accounting
• Learn and apply key concepts of managerial and financial accounting
• Calculate ratios and develop a sound ratio analysis
• Receive faculty coaching on your Corporate Financial Analysis
• Apply finance and accounting concepts to shareholder value management
• Identify red flags in financial statements

Upon completion of this program, you will earn five days towards a Certificate with select alumni and tuition benefits.

Curriculum
Topics include:

Day One
Articulating Principles of Accounting Building Blocks

• Balance sheet
• Income statement
• Statement of cash flows
• Income measurement: Cash flows versus earnings

Applying Accounting Principles

• Revenue recognition
• Matching
• Conservatism
• Manipulations and red flags

Day Two
Using Accounting Information to Make Better Decisions

• Integrating financial and managerial accounting
• Identifying profit opportunities with activity-based costing (ABC)
• Understanding the balanced scorecard and efficient budgeting
• Mastering net present value (NPV) calculations

Day Three
Understanding How to Analyze a Business

• Review actual financial statements 
• Reformulate the financial statements to facilitate informative profitability analysis
• Develop a systematic ratio analysis to evaluate profitability

Hands-On Application: Corporate Financial Analysis

• Review the financial statements of a company of your choosing, analyze its profitability, and discuss the analysis in small groups

Day Four
Determining What Makes a Business Valuable

• Develop a systematic ratio analysis to evaluate earnings quality, growth prospects, risk, and market pricing 
• Describe and demonstrate the application of fundamental and relative (price-multiple) valuation methods
• Learn the role of valuation in mergers and acquisitions (M&A)

Hands-On Application: Corporate Financial Analysis

• Applying the comprehensive ratio framework and valuation methods to analyze a company of your choosing, and discuss the analysis in small groups 

Day Five
Financial Statement Analysis and Valuation

• Evaluate the firm's strategy
• Understand its accounting choices 
• Analyze its current performance 
• Forecast its future performance 
• Estimate its fundamental value

Real-World Experience in Real Time

• Examining effective financial management in the real world
• Talking to finance professionals

Participant Profile
This course is designed for midlevel to senior-level executives with five or more years of experience in corporate or divisional roles who seek a deeper understanding of finance and accounting.

The program is well suited for those in creative or technical fields and can also serve as a refresher for executives with some knowledge of finance and accounting.

Admissions Qualifications
Successful candidates should have managerial experience and responsibilities matching a program’s “Who Should Attend” or “Participant Profile” description. All registrations are subject to approval by Columbia Business School.