Finance for Non-Finance Executives

Book excerpt: This book is intended to help professionals gain an extensive working knowledge of critical financial principles in an easy-to-follow manner. This book is intended to help professionals, especially from functional areas other than finance—such as sales, marketing, human resource, research and development, production, and procurement—to gain an extensive working knowledge of critical financial principles in an easy-to-follow manner, enabling them to make critical business decisions involving cost-savings, budgets, new projects decisions, and growth strategies. The author introduces the key concepts of finance so you can contribute to the success of your business. These will help you understand the language used by accountants and how financial statements fit together. Furthermore, you will understand how to use ratio analysis to get a sense of the company’s performance. In addition, readers will learn the concepts of management accounting and various kinds of decisions, including make-or-buy and shutdown. Readers will gain an understanding of how to implement budgeting and working capital management. The exciting part is also the chapter on investment appraisal, where readers will learn how to evaluate business proposals from a return standpoint.