Cashflow Forecasting For Existing Businesses Workshop

From trading relationships to technology, most aspects of running a small business are changing.

EU Exit uncertainty spills over in volatility and unknowns for companies’ revenues and costs. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) in particular, requiring them to adjust and/or to shrink their operations. Most SME failures are caused by cash flow issues.

This free workshop focuses on cash flow management and its use as a management tool and aims to support businesses in forecasting and evaluating the impact of changes to their cash flows on their financial performance.

Enabling Essex businesses to prepare for different scenarios, incorporating the “what if” analysis to evaluate where to make cuts and stress any proposal to its limits. A well-structured financial model can facilitate and improve the reliability and quality of firm’s decision making.

Overview

This workshop will consist of 6 hours of free online training delivered over 3 days (2 hour blocks each). Each session we will build knowledge gradually and allow participants to put into practice the techniques learned based on examples which can then be tailored to their business models.

The examples will focus on delivering the following: testing a financial analysis model with cash flows and ratios, adding a forecast to financial analysis model, adding risk techniques to financial analysis/valuation model.

The workshop will cover the following topics:

Day 1 – Wednesday 9th September

• Generate Business Forecasts and measure their accuracy
• Understand and interpret cash flows and learn how to improve them

Day 2 – Thursday 10th September

• Project the balance sheet and profit and loss account based on cash flows
• Incorporate risk, optimisation and forecasting into business models

Day 3- Friday 11th September

• Produce meaningful management reports and charts for communication

Take Homes

This is a hands on training session and therefore, at the end of the training, participants will have learned practical computer models that can be applied to their businesses in order to better manage their cash flows and be able to simulate the impact of changes caused by COVID-19 and Brexit on their financial performance.

Course Tutor – Magdalena Partac

Magdalena Partac is a Senior Lecturer in Accounting and Finance and Deputy Head of School for Economics and Finance area at ARU. Her research focuses on the impact of performance measurement and management on organisational performance in SMEs. Recently, Magdalena has joined Social Enterprises East of England as a Director. Prior to joining ARU, Magdalena has worked for 5 years as financial manager of the Projects Department at the National Council of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises in Romania.