AAT Business Finance Basics

Most people will deal with business finances in some way, whether you’re planning budget income and expenditure or interrogating the data on your financial statements. Being equipped with the skills to do this correctly and efficiently can make a huge difference to your role and, ultimately, your business’s performance.

With content drawn from AAT’s world-class accounting and finance qualifications, these six online courses cover the core skills that underpin sound financial planning and management. You’ll learn the basics of bookkeeping, budgeting, cash flow and financial statements – so you can handle your business finances with confidence.

Available at a discounted price, with this bundle you’ll enjoy the benefits of six courses for the price of five.  

The courses can also be bought individually:

• The basics of bookkeeping
• The basics of financial statements
• How to analyse financial statements
• The basics of cash flow
• The basics of budgeting
• How to create a budget

The basics of bookkeeping

Take this online course for an introduction to bookkeeping principles, enabling you to accurately record business transactions.

• What is double entry bookkeeping?
• Categories of accounts: which are debits and which are credits?
• Entering transactions into the accounts with VAT and on credit
• Customer and supplier accounts
• Trial balance
• Common errors
  • Omission
  • Principle
  • Commission
  • Reversal of entries
  • Original entry

The basics of financial statements

This online course will help you understand key financial terms and what they all mean when presented together on a statement.

• Five categories of accounts
  • Assets
  • Liabilities
  • Expenses
  • Revenue
  • Capital/equity
• The accounting equation
• The elements of financial statements
  • Current and non-current assets and liabilities
  • Capitalisation threshold
  • Capital/equity
• Calculating profits
  • Including accruals concept
• Layouts of financial statements

How to analyse financial statements

This online course will help you master the crucial skill of being able to interpret and evaluate the data in your financial statements.

• Profitability ratios
• Liquidity
• Efficiency
• Financial position
• Limitations of ratio analysis – what it tells us and what it does not say

The basics of cash flow

Learn how to monitor cash flow, to produce forecasts to predict shortfalls, and best practice credit control processes with this online course.

• Cash flow cycle
• Cash and non-cash transactions
• Operational and non-operational cash flows
• Cash vs profit
• Calculate cash positions
  • Changes from one period to next and compare to profit
  • Reconcile the difference
• Maintaining cash flow through the cash budget
  • Including lagging because of credit transactions
• Reducing the risk of granting credit

The basics of budgeting

This online course will help you understand the theory behind effective budgeting and the common challenges businesses face.

• Vision and strategy
• Who plans and writes the budget?
• Types of budgets
  • Capital, revenue and cash
  • Capitalisation threshold
• Performance
  • Targets
  • Slack
  • Contingency
  • Budget holder's rivalry
  • Suboptimal
• Methods
  • Incremental
  • Zero based
  • Priority based
• Break even
  • Allocating overheads

How to create a budget

This online course will empower you to plan and create budgets from scratch, ensuring you invest and monitor your funds correctly.

• Revenue budgets
• Information sources and cost behaviour
• Activity changes
  • Seasons
  • Technology
  • Social trends
  • Economy
• Completing a budget and calculating profit
• Monitoring budgets
  • Variance analysis
  • Flexed budget
  • The need to use information to reforecast

When you’ve completed the six courses, you’ll understand how to:

• effectively plan and create budgets, ensuring you invest and monitor funds correctly
• monitor cash flow, produce forecasts to predict shortfalls, and best practice credit control processes
• interpret and evaluate the data in your financial statements, including the key terminology
• accurately record business transactions and the bookkeeping principles underpinning this.

This course is perfect if you're:

• running your own business and looking to improve your financial acumen
• in a non-financial role but want to develop a solid understanding of the processes behind sound financial planning and management
• looking to upskill by bolstering your basic finance skills.

AAT Business Finance Basics is a 3 hour session consisting of six courses including video tutorials and interactive learning to test your knowledge as you learn.

Once purchased you will be able to access the AAT Learning Portal where you'll have 12 months access from the date of accessing the learning materials. AAT Learning Portal allows you to view all the courses you’ve purchased in one place, monitor your latest training activity and create goals to help you achieve your training aims.