Beyond Bean Counting: Keep your Business Financially Sound

How can it be possible to have cash in the bank and be making a trading loss? Or conversely, how can it be possible to be making a profit, have orders aplenty and yet still go bust!

It sounds alarming but the truth is that if you can simply add and subtract then you can quickly learn almost everything you need to know to keep your business financially sound.

We’ll assume no prior knowledge in building your understanding of key financial concepts to the point where you’ll feel confident of your ability to manage cash, measure profits, control your finances and use financial information to inform your decision making.

This workshop is built on real-world financial mistakes kindly made by others so you don’t have to!

Through a mixture of case studies and simulations, you will explore;

• the nature of costs; capital and revenue expenditure, fixed and variable costs
• gross profit (GP)
• gross profit percentages
• comparing businesses: high and low GP business types
• the significance of gross profit
• break-even analysis
• impact of discounts/price increases on profitability
• creatively exploiting high margins
• making business decisions with your budget
• cash and profitability
• working capital: the cash cycle and overtrading
• the business plan: the profit & loss account, balance sheet, cash flow forecast
• limited and unlimited liability
• the implications of VAT
• establishing financial criteria for judging an opportunity

This professional development workshop is for emerging artists and other creative practitioners looking to commercialise their work. It has been funded by Arts Council England and Newcastle City Library

Newcastle City Library | Newcastle-upon-Tyne