Certificate in Finance Essentials

Lesson 1
Certificate in Finance Essentials Module 1 - Financial Planning and Control
• Explain cost benefit analysis
• Calculate return on investment and the payback period
• Explain fixed and variable costs
• Calculate break even and understand CVP (cost-volume-profit) analysis
• Explain tracking and performance measures
• Explain and calculate Balanced Scorecard measures

Certificate in Finance Essentials Module 2 - How to Read a Financial Statement
• Identify and describe the documents and financial statements included in an organization's financial report
• Itemize and interpret the information in the income statement, balance sheet, statement of changes in shareholders' equity, and statement of cash flows
• Correctly state the impact of specific business activities on cash flow
• Define financial (ratio) analysis and explain its objectives and limitations
• Identify the various types and categories of financial ratios
• Perform calculations using financial ratios

Certificate in Finance Essentials Module 3 - Introduction to Business Statistics
• Differentiate between descriptive and inferential statistics
• Distinguish between the four different scales of measurement: nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio
• Identify the appropriate graphical or tabular method for presenting your data
• Create frequency distributions
• Create meaningful presentations and graphs including:
• frequency polygons
• bar graphs
• pie charts
• line graphs
• histograms
• Calculate probability and explain its practical application
• Compute the mode, median, and mean of a dataset
• Calculate the variance and standard deviation of a dataset
• Interpret sampling with and without replacement
• Explain the significance of the area under a curve

Certificate in Finance Essentials Module 4 - Introduction to Finance
• Identify and differentiate the three most common types of business organizations and the structure of each
• State the fundamental objectives of a corporation and the differences between wealth and profit maximization
• Recognize the impact of social and ethical responsibility on business
• Identify and describe the structure and functions of the finance department within an organization
• Define the principal-agent relationship and strategies for overcoming conflicts of interest and motivating managers
• List and define the five key principles that form the foundation of financial management
• Recognize and define the five key financial markets
• Identify the sources, rules, and life-cycle stages of corporate financing
• Describe the function of the stock market and the three trading venues it utilizes
• Recognize the factors related to interest rate determination and the impact of interest on an organization

Certificate in Finance Essentials Module 5 - Time Value of Money and Risk
• Distinguish between points in time and periods of time as shown by a time line
• Define compounding and discounting
• Compute future value or present value for single payment amounts
• Distinguish between single payments and streams of payments and between uneven streams and annuities
• Solve for the interest rate or time period for simple present value and future value problems
• Define risk
• Describe how risk influences investment decisions
• Calculate risk and rates of return
• Describe how diversification can limit risk
• Explain how diversifiable risk can be lowered using a portfolio approach

Certificate in Finance Essentials Module 6 - Understanding and Managing Budgets
• Recognize the uses and functions of budgeting
• Recognize the key activities, considerations, and benefits of strategic organizational planning
• Recognize the purpose and make-up of a master budget
• Identify the components and calculations used to create a master budget and recognize uses for this information
• Identify the components and purpose of an operating budget
• Recognize how sales, production, and cost of goods sold budgets are created and perform related calculations
• Recognize the purpose of cash budgets and how they are prepared
• Identify ways the budget process can be managed for optimal results and recognize the benefits and limitations of the management-by-objective system