Why Non-Finance Professionals Should Know Finance?

Let’s say you’re an IT professional or a mechanical engineer. Do you really need to pick up finance skills?

Yes, you do.

Just because you’re a non-finance professional is no excuse for you not to learn finance. Every day, non-finance professionals such as project leaders or managers make decisions that make a difference to their company’s financial performance.

Preparing a budget, scheduling operations, approving an investment of capital, sending invoices, reading a financial statement – There are so many things you do at your job that require basic finance skills, even if you have nothing to do with finance.

What happens when you don’t have the basic finance skills? Resources get wasted, bad decisions are made and the performance of the entire organization takes a hit.

That’s why finance for non-finance professionals matters. You should know the basics of finance, regardless of where you have a background in finance or not.

What Non-Finance Professionals Should Know About Finance?

Every non-finance professional should have the following basic financial skills.

Basics of Budgeting

It doesn’t matter whether you have a background in finance or not. You should know how to prepare a budget. Don’t you prepare a monthly budget to manage your household expenses? Similarly, you could be called upon to prepare a budget for your department within the organization. As a team leader or project manager working in an IT company, you will be expected to create a budget in order to get the approval of the senior management.

Basics of Forecasting

Forecasting is a skill similar to budgeting. Budgeting is about managing the financial resources allocated to you. Forecasting takes this a step further and involves making a thorough evaluation of the budget plan, based on which the management can determine whether you’re headed in the right direction or not.

Basics of Reporting

Reporting involves preparing financial statements or reports, which contain key information related to the progress of a project. The reports are read by the senior management, and allows them to make mission critical decisions. As a non-finance professional, you should be conversant with the essential finance terms. You should be comfortable with the financial jargon that a senior manager or client may throw at you.

Basics of Accounting

As a non-finance professional, you don’t need to be an expert in accounting, but will be expected to be familiar with the basics. You should be able to differentiate between Net Income and Free Cash Flow, for example. You should know what Accounts Receivable is and how it is different from Accounts Payable.

Basics of Data analysis

As a non-finance professional, you will be called upon to make decisions every day based on an analysis of the financial data that’s available to you. Knowing the basics of data analytics can help.Of course, there is a lot of talk about Big Data these days and building skills in data analytics will open up several career opportunities for you.

Finance For Non-Finance Professionals: How to Get Started?

Join the course Finance Skills for Non-Finance Professionals at SKILLFIN LEARNING. This course is designed for busy non-finance professionals and college students.

We teach you everything from the scratch. You will be given a thorough, industry-relevant training in the following.

• Accounting
• Business Valuation
• DCF valuation approach
• Financial Analysis
• Main Financial Statements of a company
• Financial Ratios
• Performance benchmarking
• Multiples valuation approach

The online course on finance for non-finance professionals will be conducted by Ashish, a finance expert with 10 years of experience in the financial services industry. Ashish has worked previously with BlackRock and McKinsey and advises corporate clients on business strategy and finance.

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