From the course: Finance for Non-Financial Managers (2015)

How to make wiser business decisions

From the course: Finance for Non-Financial Managers (2015)

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How to make wiser business decisions

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- Hi, my name is Jim Stice. I'm an accounting professor at Brigham Young University. I took my first accounting class in high school almost 40 years ago and I loved it. It all made perfect sense to me. I guess you can say that makes me a numbers person. And I know some of you are saying right now I am grateful there are people like you out there who enjoy the numbers stuff, but that is not me. Well you don't have to become a numbers person but you can try to appreciate how numbers are used in business. You can understand where and when numbers can provide an important input into business decisions. Our objective with this course is to take the edge off the numbers of business. We will introduce you to the topics of accounting and finance. In this course you will learn about the financial statements, what they tell us and how they are used. You will learn how numbers help us manage our inventory levels, that's how much stuff we have for resale. Our receivables levels, that's how much money customers owe us, and our levels of cash. Well cash is cash, we all know what that is. You will learn how numbers help us analyze the number of customers needed to keep the doors open and how to price a product. We will also talk about the importance of budgeting and how that cannot be done without looking at the numbers. Numbers are not to be feared, numbers are to be appreciated. You shouldn't exclude yourself from conversations in fact or in appearance just because numbers come up. You want to be a decision-maker. You want to be part of the decision-making team. And if that means you need to get comfortable at least in some degree with the numbers side of business, so be it. So let's get started.

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