Financial Analysis for Business Performance: Planning, Budgeting, and Forecasting

FutureLearn

You need to login to add your rating.

Start Date: 06 Jun, 2022
4 weeks
Study Content: Videos

Learn how to conduct financial-performance analysis, forecasting, and budgetary planning.

Course Fee: Free

Certificate Cost: See Fees and Eligibility

Enrol Now

Course Description

This course is made available through the eLearnAfrica and FutureLearn partnership.

Gain skills in financial analysis

Strong skills in budgeting and planning are in demand for a variety of roles - whether you’re interested in starting a career as an accountant, business analyst, or consultant, or even if you want to start your own business and need to manage these areas yourself.

This four-week course provides an introduction to financial analysis, showing you the main tools that you have in order to start analysing and optimising for business performance. You will learn to find your way around a balance sheet, understand financial performance analysis, and determine which analysis tools to use for each.

Demonstrate how planning and budgeting help meet business goals

Countless businesses fail because of a poor grasp of their financials, and a lack of proper analysis when making key business decisions. You’ll explore the key function and purpose of business planning and budgeting, and how they contribute towards business goals.

Understand how to interpret a business financial statement

Financial analysis includes interpretation of a business’ financial statements to diagnose profitability, helping the business to make sound decisions with full knowledge of its performance, expected revenue, and margins. You’ll learn to differentiate and deploy different analysis tools to provide business insights.

Create a set of business performance metrics to inform your work

Putting your knowledge into practice, you’ll perform and interpret key analyses to create a set of performance metrics to inform business planning and operations.

This course is designed to support learners who need to engage with large volumes of financial data. This includes entry-level finance or accounting professionals who would like to progress to higher-skill positions, and current finance professionals. It would also be useful for new managers and leaders, as well as business workers and entrepreneurs.

To build on what you learn in this course, take a look at these courses, from the same provider:

Financial Analysis for Business Performance: Reporting and Stakeholder Management

Financial Analysis for Business Performance: Data-Driven Decision Making

During this course we’ll be using Excel. If you don’t have Excel, you might find this online version useful.

We recommend you use a computer to access this course.

Certificate cost may vary. You will be redirected to the host page for cost and payment options.

FutureLearn

This university is part of the partnership between eLearnAfrica and FutureLearn.

This institution is available on eLearnAfrica through partnership with FutureLearn.

You may be able to download course materials after enrolling in this course. If not, all of the necessary course materials provided by the course instructor will be available on the provider's course page.

COLLABORATION POLICY

By enrolling in a course on or through eLearnAfrica, you are joining a special worldwide community of learners. The aspiration of eLearnAfrica is to provide anyone with an internet connection access to courses from the best universities and institutions in the world and to provide our learners the best educational experience internet technology enables. You are a part of the community that will help eLearnAfrica achieve this goal. eLearnAfrica depends upon your motivation to learn the material and to do so with honesty and academic integrity. In order to participate in eLearnAfrica, you must agree to the Honor Code below and any additional terms specific to a class.

ELEARNAFRICA HONOR CODE PLEDGE

By enrolling in a course, program, or degree hosted on the eLearnAfrica App or Site, I agree that I will:

Complete all tests and assignments on my own, unless collaboration on an assignment is explicitly permitted.
Maintain only one user account and not let anyone else use my username and/or password.
Not engage in any activity that would dishonestly improve my results, or improve or hurt the results of others.
Not post answers to problems that are being used to assess student performance.
Abide by any and all requirements of the eLearnAfrica Participants as may regard the expectations of civil or academic behavior or of community standards.

VIOLATIONS

If you are found in violation of the Terms and Conditions or Honor Code, you may be subject to one or more of the following actions:

Receiving a zero or no credit for an assignment;
Having any certificate earned in the course withheld or revoked;
Being unenrolled from a course, learning program or degree program; or
Termination of your use of the App and/or Site.
Additional actions may be taken at the sole discretion of eLearnAfrica and eLearnAfrica course providers.

No refunds will be issued in the case of any corrective action for such violations.

Honor code violations will be determined at the sole discretion of eLearnAfrica, the Partners, or Members. You will be notified if a determination has been made that you have violated this honor code and you will be informed of the corresponding action to be taken as a result of the violation.

CHANGING THE HONOR CODE

Please note that we review and may make changes to this Honor Code from time to time. Any changes to this Honor Code will be effective immediately upon posting on this page, with an updated effective date. By accessing the App and/or Site after any changes have been made, you signify your agreement on a prospective basis to the modified Honor Code and any changes contained therein. Be sure to return to this page periodically to ensure familiarity with the most current version of this Honor Code.

Effective Date: September 22, 2016