Effective Financial Management for Small Business

Are you running your own business or excited to start a new business initiative, but have limited financial management skills and experience?

This course will help you learn and apply fundamental financial management skills to your small business. By the end of this course, you will have skills in developing a solid financial foundation and maintaining standard processes around the financing of a small business.

• This course will help you develop fundamental skills required to manage finances for your small business and to become a pro in finance management. You will be able to manage taxation requirements, credit management and monitoring marketing and operational strategies.
• Implement financial plan
• Monitor financial performance

Before you start this course, please make sure that you have completed a business plan for your small business. This course is an upper level of finance planning and management so if you need more information, please complete the course Small Business Planning Essentials. If you're not familiar with business planning yet, we recommend to complete this course first.

Week 1: Implement a financial plan (Part 1) 

In Week 1, you’ll be introduced to the fundamental concepts of finance management for small businesses and how to effectively put them into action. We will focus on developing procedures and measures to ensure the business follows its financial plan. In particular, you will learn what financial projections, cash flow and business capital is.  

Week 2: Implement a financial plan (Part 2) 

In Week 2, we will continue with implementing a financial plan for your small business. We will explore stock control, taxation requirements, credit management and key performance indicators (KPIs).  

Week 3: Monitor financial performance 

Implementing without monitoring is like launching a new product and not asking your customers for feedback (and how they would rate it). In Week 3, we will focus on monitoring the progress of your business towards financial targets and your overall plan, including monitoring financial performance, monitoring marketing and operational strategies, financial ratios and assessing the financial plan.   

Week 4: The Finish Line! 

In this very last week, you will have a great opportunity to complete your Major Tasks you've been working on throughout the course. You can double-check your answers and documents and make sure you've included everything required and what you think is relevant to the course. You can still make changes if needed.     

In Week 4, you will finish the course, celebrate your achievements and perhaps get ready for your next Learn.com.au course :). You can also ask for feedback or peer review (we strongly recommend it).