IT Applications

Business Planning using Spreadsheets

to design and develop spreadsheet models of increasing complexity, including a business plan for a small business.
to understand the importance of financial models for planning and managing a small business.

Requirements: Importance of analysis, planning and control for a small business. Business planning models. Interpretation of profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow reports.
Developing a spreadsheet: Navigation, functions, range names, formulae, printing, absolute and relative cell addresses.
Maintaining a spreadsheet: Loading, saving, backup and security. Basic principles of effective spreadsheet design: modular structure, documentation, audit trails, ease of maintenance, readability, consistency, password protection.
Business planning: Developing spreadsheet models of the components of a business plan for a small company: sales and expenditure, cash flow, profit and loss, balance sheet forecasts.
Financial and logical functions: Loan analysis, depreciation of fixed assets, sales forecasting using Trend, Growth and Moving Average, IF Statements.
Graphs and charts: Use of charts to illustrate trends in financial data.
Management Reports: sharing spreadsheet data and charts with other office applications to produce management reports.

Basic PC skills, eg. file compression, managing files and folders, using browsers.
Basic spreadsheet skills, eg. creating, opening and saving files, finding and previewing files, entering and editing worksheet data, creating basic charts, printing.