In-house trainingFinancial Literacy for Non-Finance Professionals
Key Outcomes
Read the income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement
E.g., find revenue, net profit, cash at bank, receivables and payables in a sample set, and explain why profit is not cash.
Use margins and key ratios
E.g., on illustrative figures, a RM100 item costing RM60 earns RM40. A 20% discount cuts that to RM20, so volume must double to keep the same profit.
Manage cash and working capital
E.g., if customers pay in 64 days and suppliers want payment in 30, you must fund the gap, so build a simple 13-week cash forecast.
Prepare and defend a budget or business case
E.g., justify a RM50,000 equipment purchase with payback period, and explain a budget-versus-actual variance.
Why teams need this
Non-finance managers are asked to own budgets and justify spending, yet profit and cash get confused. Margin and mark-up get mixed up too, and decisions get made on revenue instead of what is left. In Financial Intelligence (Berman and Knight, HBR Press), "profit is an estimate" and cash is the reality check. Malaysian data shows why that matters. Experian's 2025 report has SMEs paying in 64 days against 58 for large corporations, and says many SMEs "remain highly exposed to cash flow gaps".