MSING007 Entrepreneurial Finance

Lecturer: Alan Parkinson

Module Profile

This module provides the requisite understanding, knowledge and skills to enable a student successfully completing the module to be able to identify and assess the financial implications of project and business planning, and take account of relevant financial matters in managing a project/business. As such the content of this module provides the essentials any manager should have when considering proposing projects and assessing its financial viability and impact on the business.

The module focus is on elements of both Financial Accounting and Financial Management. The Financial Accounting focus is concerned with the nature of key financial statements such as Income Statements, Balance Sheets, and Cash Flow Statements, and their roles as external reporting instruments. It is also concerned with the measurement of performance through the use of financial ratios and non-financial measures. 

Contextually the world of finance is introduced.  The Financial Management focus is on decision making associated with designing, implementing and managing a project. Here, approaches to determining the cost of products, services and activities are important ingredients of cost management. This focus also covers planning through budgeting, and ideas to help in financial decision making, including break even analysis and long term investment appraisal. This module has merit as a stand alone module and also as an underpinning to subsequent studies, particularly in the arena of business planning. Prior accounting/finance studies are not presumed.

Objectives

By the end of this module, a successful student will have gained an appropriate knowledge and understanding of:

  • The nature of entrepreneurial finance
  • Theoretical and conceptual underpinning of and frameworks for       financial accounting and financial management
  • Nature, purpose and characteristics of income statements, cash flow statements, balance sheets as financial reporting mechanisms
  • Issues in revenue recognition, expense recognition, accruals, prepayments, depreciation, inventory valuation, recognition of liabilities
  • Financial and non-financial performance measurement
  • Issues in the determination of the cost of products, services and activities and the implications for cost control and pricing 
  • The relationships between cost, activity volumes and profit, and their implications for planning and decision making
  • The use of relevant costs in decision making, particularly pricing
  • Investment appraisal
  • Challenges in the broader arena of policies associated with legal and financial structure of business operations, dividends and taxation.

Assessment

The assessment methodology is currently being revised. Updated details to be posted online asap. 

Core Textbook

Berman, K. and Knight, J. (with John Case) (2008): Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs, Harvard Business Review Press, 1st Edition, 284 pages. ISBN: 978-1-4221-1915-0