Week of 24th January - financial management

[editoruk]

On to skills and training this week - financial management in particular. No doubt most of you will have to handle finances of some kind, but have you received any formal training - or was it all 'on the job' - and how much is expected of you?

Clare
Editor UK

[bex1408]

At my last job, i controlled all day to day financial matters of the company.  I never received any training, i learnt it all on the job by trial and error.

What they expected was beyond belief, i had never worked in a financial background before and when i joined the company i was the only member of office staff working with the two owners.  I had to fulfil every role needed in an office.  The one incident that sticks out by a mile was when the bank requested a cash flow.  I created a day by day cashflow over eight months, it took three weeks of solid work to create it, i had nowhere near the excel skills i have now then.  I had to deeply analyse how our money was spent (turned out we spent 75% of our income, and 85% of that went one way and 15% the other, the cash flow had to contain a formula that reflected the expenditure dependant on the sales) when our money was received etc etc.  By the end of that i was a wreck.  The boss turned round to me and said "haven't you finished that yet? It should only have taken ten minutes"  I have never felt like hurting someone so much.

I had to carry out the supplier payments, the office staff (we did grow substantially) wages, liaise with the bank on a day to day basis, the VAT return, pretty much all financial requirements bar the annual returns.  It was the hardest job i have ever had, i was always stressed but it was also the job i enjoyed the most.

[sobriquetnic]

Hi there

The only things I do undertake are the invoicing for the company and the receipt and reconciling of the resulting receipts.  I am also responsible for working out staff incentives and profits.  However, my life is made extremely easy by both Excel and our own in-house software so I can't really grumble!  Modern software ensures that finances for our company are not really a hardship.  Good job for me really because maths was never my strong point!

All the best,
Nicola.

[gee4]

I am mostly self taught although my required input to financial issues over the years has been small.

G

[mlm668]

My current position is that of admin and bookkeeper.  My training has been pretty much on the job and I'm self taught in my job and on our accounting system except for the very basics of it.  When I was offered the position last year, it was arranged for a software trainer to come in and show me what I didn't already know to speed up the transition.  That was a big help, but no one sat down and told me what to charge where - to learn that I had to look back at what my predecessor had done and figure it out on my own.

Fortunately, I took accounting classes in high school, business school and when I started on my Associate's degree a couple of years ago.  That has helped with my understanding of finances, but I still have a lot to learn.  My theory on learning accounting has always been to learn the procedure first and the understanding of why you're doing certain tasks will come with experience.  By not trying to understand the "why's" from the get go, I learned much quicker.  A lot of accounting is procedure and once you learn that, you get a better feel for where the numbers need to come from and why to get the information you want/need.

I can't say how much is expected of me, but I know how much I'm depended on to know what's going on and how to find information that's needed.  I don't know how much more responsiblity I'll be given in the next several months with all of our changes, but Big Bossie has mentioned sending me to a software user's conference in the spring to learn more about our system.  I'd love to go, but that decision can't be made until he can discuss what's going to happen with our accounting department/system with the company who's buying into ours.

Michelle