Study the history, principles, and investment analysis tools of business finance in this free online finance course.

The aim of this course is to help you get the right understanding of financial management. You will start with a study of the history of business finance and learn about the management of the monetary resources of an organization or business. Financial records from ancient Iran, Egypt, Rome and modern-day bookkeeping will be compared as well as the three main strands of business finance will also be covered. This section will comprehensively pinpoint the key reasons for the failure of most businesses within the first five years. Thereafter, the two aspects of business finance, (1) raising money to invest in the business and (2) managing the investment to generate a return, as well as the five key principles of business finance will be examined.

The next section of this online finance class will teach you the essence of the balance sheet, the source of finance, credit, and destination of finance which sets the groundwork for learning the definitions of common finance terms including fixed assets, current assets, current liabilities, shareholders’ funds amongst others. Thereafter, you will study the meaning of a cash flow statement. There are a number of formats for the cash flow statement and this is the area where accountancy regulations defer the most. Simple formats will be presented that will prepare you for a short exercise on business finance that you need to solve. The content of the exercise will test your knowledge on how to calculate and create a balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statement for an organization.

You will then be introduced to some financial performance indicators that the management of every business should use. The net profit percentage, return on capital employed, the acid test ratio, debtor days, and interest cover are the key performance indicators to be considered. To grow, businesses need to invest and each potential investment opportunity needs to be assessed in terms of its suitability for the business. This bit of content will teach you how to assess or analyze an investment’s returns. Two tools; the Payback Period and the Net Present Value (NPV) will be discussed and you will learn how to calculate the payback period and use the NPV function in Microsoft Excel to calculate the NPV in a project on investment analysis. By the end of this course, you will have a much better understanding of how to manage the monetary resources of your business and guide it to success so enrol in this finance certificate program and learn the principles of corporate finance and much more.