Finance for Managers Without a Finance Background: P&L Lines, Department Budgets, Headcount Costs, Cash vs Profit & Simple Business Cases

What you'll build

What you will be able to do

Each lab ends with a concrete result that you build yourself and the checker confirms, cell by cell.

• Read a business unit's P&L the way finance does: revenue, gross profit and gross margin %, EBIT and EBIT margin, and the share of all costs that you as the manager really control.
• Phase an annual cost budget into the quarter, compare it with the actuals, express each variance in % and flag every line as favourable or unfavourable – by formula and by colour.
• Flex a monthly budget to the real volume – variable lines grow with deliveries, fixed lines stay – and find out whether a big overspend against the original budget is really a problem.
• Cost a team the way finance does: months on the payroll this year, salary cost, employer load, benefits and equipment for new hires – and next year's full-year run-rate.
• See why profit and cash differ: days to pay per invoice, the cash really collected by quarter end, the receivables still open, DSO and DPO – and the cash gap between them.
• Judge a small investment the way the finance team will: cumulative cash and the payback year, NPV at the company's discount rate and the IRR.
• Answer the two pricing questions managers get most: how much extra volume a discount needs to keep the same contribution, and which price gives a target margin (and why that is not the same as a markup).
• Build the one page a manager brings to the monthly review: the forecast to year-end, the forecast variance, KPI traffic lights with IFS and a budget-vs-actual chart.