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Small Business Finance

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ENT 4412- MANAGING SMALL BUSINESS FINANCES

 

I. Course Overview

The Managing Small Business Finances course is designed to show you all of the different ways that the finance function impacts every aspect of a business’s operations. Yes, we will review some of the important financial statements that you learned in your accounting classes, but more importantly we are going to learn a few of the financial ratios that are really important tools for business managers to measure the “health” of the company and apply those tools in analyzing the financial statements to learn how the business is really performing. We are also going to cover a number of related topics that impact a company’s financial well-being, such as inventory management, managing accounts receivables and payables to improve the all-important cash flow, and how to manage our relationships with our suppliers. We are going to leverage the finance function’s importance and provide you with several different views of day to day issues facing business owners and managers so that you can understand how a financial event (like selling a product or ordering more inventory or equipment) can impact a company in a number of ways.

II. Course Objectives

  • Demonstrate the ability to describe and measure the flow of funds to and from a company, and transaction flow within the company.
  • Determine the impact of transaction flows on profitability and use this information to make effective decisions.

 

III. Course & Lecture Format

This course will follow a flipped classroom approach.  Students will be expected to spend approx. 4-6 hours of individual prep and team time every week in order to prepare for our face-to-face meetings.  Approximately 98% of the course material will be delivered via Canvas.  The course content will include open source content such as: .pdf files, podcasts, website articles, Ted Talks, YouTube videos, business periodicals, eBook chapters and other relevant content.  The course structure is simple and clear – in order to be successful, every student must come to class fully prepared.  That means completing all course work for that week via Canvas.  There will be LITTLE to NO lecturing during our weekly face-to-face meetings – instead, each student will be expected to apply the content from the module for that week through team based case studies and present their team’s findings to the class.

IV. Class Assignments

Class assignments for this course will include (but are not limited too) presentations, case studies, written reports, and various software/tool usage.  Some of your assignments will be completed in class but most will require outside of class preparation and planning.  Please allocate a designated team meeting time and place OUTSIDE of our regularly scheduled classes in order to meet (and exceed) the expectations of the course by filling out the Team Contract at the beginning of the semester.