The reality of Covid 19 means that we need to re-think
how we receive training.

There’s no doubt that learning and development is still essential.

Many businesses will have underutilised staff on their payroll.

Now is the ideal time to upskill the workforce in preparation for the future.

Training also has the added benefit of motivating the workforce and providing a focus for the mind.

The office is out of bounds for training

 
With social distancing in operation and many workers at home, the old reality of face-to-face training needs to be re-thought.

We need to explore new alternatives and understand what will be the new normal in relation to training.

The power of technology

Thankfully, we have the power of technology to help us.

The workplace is virtually connected and we have many tools we can utilise to our advantage.

There are technology solutions from webinars to virtual training rooms to online whiteboards, which can be used to deliver in-house training remotely.

How online training can be used for in-house courses

We can deliver interactive in-house training remotely online.

There are many robust online platforms which can be successfully used to deliver training and replicate as much as possible a face-to-face envrionment.

It is, of course, important to utilise this technology effectively. It is easy for the inexperienced presenter to get it wrong.
 
At Financial Fluency we have many years of practical experience using online training room technology to deliver in-house tailored training course.

We know how to make online courses interactive and include participants in the experience. It is so important to properly engage learners and involve them in the learning process, when delivering training online.

If you would like to talk about how we can deliver our in-house training courses online and see a demonstration, please do contact us.

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As well as offering inhouse remote courses, we also offer a number of off-the-shelf online e-learning courses which still utilise a degree of interactivity.

View our full list of remote learning courses at
https://www.financial-fluency.co.uk/online-learning/full-list-of-online-courses/

CPD Year End Courses for ACCA

Complete your ACCA CPD now
whilst there is still plenty of time

The 2024 CPD year end is in
.

Are you looking for verifiable CPD hours to top up or make your allocation?

We can help with your CPD requirements

We have reasonably priced CPD courses available throughout the year.

Click on the button below to find out more about our online training courses.

Verifiable CPD

All our courses are verifiable for CPD (continuing professional development) purposes.

A verifiable certificate of completion is available for every course.

For the new Strategic Case Study there are 5 things we already know about which will be very important to all Strategic Students.

These are:

1) There are no calculations in the Case Study Exam

HURRAH shout some of you! Well, it’s not all good news… Calculations in the old T4 exam were a definite area where marks could be gained. In the new SCS exam, the general requirements are going to be less specific and harder to “learn”. This will make improving harder because you might be at a loss to discover where you are failing. Getting feedback on your Mock Exam scripts for the new Case Study Exam will therefore be vital to ensure you are getting all the rights points and answering them in the right way!

2) Technical knowledge of the theory from F3, P3 and E3 syllabi will be required

You can’t forget the technical material now you’ve passed your E3, F3 and P3 exams. You’ve still got be very familiar with it as you will be expected to use it in this exam. If you’ve just failed T4, you will need to go back and revise these subjects as you’ll need more specific knowledge than you did for T4. You’ll need to use your knowledge in the context of the case study company and the specific new information provided. Application will be the key, rather than simply being able to state the theory. The best answers will use theoretical knowledge in combination with wider analysis and business acumen. With technical skills totalling 25% of the exam this is a vital element to passing.

3) There is preseen material released 7 weeks before the exam – you will need to analyse the material and have a full understanding of it

In the exam you play the role of a member of staff, most likely a senior manager in the case study organisation, and your analysis and recommended strategies are expected to be as insightful about case study company as it would be about your own organisation.

4) Creating a balanced answer script will be key to passing

There are 4 learning outcomes for the Strategic Case Study (SCS): technical, business, people and leadership skills. Each of these criteria represents roughly 25% of the marks in the exam and as such you need to understand how the marks are awarded for each and how to write your answers in a balanced way. Your answer could be technically perfect, but you’ll get no more than 25% in the exam if that’s all there is to your script!

5) There is no escaping the keyboard!

 
All CIMA exams will be computer centre based. For the Case Study Exam CIMA insist that this exam is not a test of typing speed and that an average typing speed of 20 words per minute will get you an answer long enough to pass. While that may be true, our experience of computer based case studies (going back to 2006 when they were introduced) is that longer scripts usually indicate a greater the level of depth, which will score more points. Therefore it will be your aim to type as quickly as you can and write as much as you can without compromising on the quality of your work.

Do you want to read more about our approach to the
CIMA Strategic Case Study

Read how to pass the CIMA Strategic Case Study in 2015 here

Sign up for our free CIMA Strategic Case Study resources now

The results

Load time = 4 times quicker
Save time = 2 times quicker
File size = 1.5 times smaller

This mainly applies to larger excel files. There is less difference for smaller excel files. See below for the basis of these results.

So what do I have to do to speed up my excel?

All you do is change the file format to xlsb. That’s it!

Tell me more!

Depending on your version of excel it will most likely default to saving as a xlsx (or potentially xls if it’s an older spreadsheet) file extension.

When saving your excel file, drop down the options menu next to “Save as type:”, just below the “File name:” box.

Choose the option called “Excel Binary Workbook (*.xlsb)”. See the screen grab below for an illustration:
 

So what exactly is xlsb?

xlsb is a binary file format. It’s the coding used to save the excel file, although this will be completely irrelevant to the vast majority of excel users. Binary format is an alternative to the open standard XML programming language. The binary format is specific to excel.

Will it make any difference to my excel usage?

There is no functional difference to your excel usage that you will notice in practice.

What does a tomato have to do with excel?

Nothing! I just really liked the picture! It was a nice big to small analogy and looked more interesting than a screen shot of my folder showing reduced excel file sizes!

Are there any limitations?

Yes there are a few although these will not impact on the majority of excel users.

(1) Other spreadsheet packages will be unable to read the file. Some people import excel files into other packages, such as open office. These are now unlikely to be able to read your file. If you just stick to excel then this is not an issue. You can always get round this limitation by ‘saving as’ xlsx or xls formats.

(2) The default format of xls or xlsx supports Extensible Markup Language (XML) which is an international standard format that can used across IT systems, can be viewed with a text editor as well as other uses. Xlsb is a binary file format which does not follow these standards and cannot be read or manipulated by other IT systems. This may result in a compatibility problem if you link systems together, for example import/export excel into your accounting system. As with the above limitation this will have no impact on the majority of regular excel users.

(3) Although xlsb supports macros, you may not be able to tell if there are macros in the file, unlike xlsx has to be changed to xlsm to support macros. It is therefore advisable to change your macro settings to automatically disable macros with prompt to avoid any macro issues. At the same if you use VBA regularly you may like this feature as you don’t have to change the file type to xlsm when adding a macro &/or VBA code. If you don’t use macros or VBA then this is not an issue.

(4) There have been some reports of issues when moving between versions of excel, especially in Excel 2007. I believe Microsoft made some enhancements in 2010 onwards. So to be safe it will be safer to use this format in versions of excel after 2007 e.g. 2010 or 2013.

Do you like this tip and want more tips?

Great!
(1) Sign up below to receive free notifications of other tips by email.
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(2) Check out our open course on spreadsheet skills. Below is a link to our public excel course:
www.financial-fluency.co.uk/financial-training-courses/open-training-courses/spreadsheet-excel-skills-for-finance/
We also hold in-house corporate excel training, see link below:
www.financial-fluency.co.uk/financial-training-courses/business-it-skills/spreadsheet-excel-skills/

Source of test results
*Tested in 2012 on a generated worksheet with 10,000 rows * 1,000 columns = 10,000,000 (10^7) cells of simple chained =…+1 formulas by mike7952 an excel forum expert from Florida, USA.

Financial Fluency are delighted to welcome our online learning customers from over 30 countries around the world.

Accessibility of online learning

The above map of the world demonstrates the power of online learning to increase accessibility to CPD for many people around the globe.

Many of our global customers would not otherwise have access to courses to complete their continuing professional development (CPD) requirements.

As our online courses can be accessed from anywhere in the world, 24/7, by anyone with access to the internet.

List of Countries currently using our online CPD courses

• Australia
• Barbados
• Botswana
• Canada
• China
• Cyprus
• Dubai
• England
• France
• Germany
• Gibraltar
• Republic Of Ireland
• Italy
• Luxembourg
• Malaysia
• Mauritious
• Netherlands
• Nigeria
• Northern Ireland
• Poland
• Russia
• Saudi Arabia
• Scotland
• Seychelles
• Singapore
• Sri Lanka
• South Africa
• Switzerland
• Trinidad and Tobago
• UAE (United Arab Emirates)
• UK (United Kingdom)
• USA (United States of America)
• Wales
• Zimbabwe

This reflects the global diversity of the accounting qualifications such as ACCA, CIMA and ICAEW.

Find out more about Financial Fluency’s online CPD courses

You can read more about our e-learning courses and browse our list of over 100 courses at
https://www.financial-fluency.co.uk/online-learning/

Business Commentaries

Business commentaries should be:

• Focused around the needs and requirements of the user(s)

• Appropriate in breadth and depth – anticipating the “so what” questions

• Prioritised on ‘big issues’ that will likely be of most relevance

• Concise in style yet precise in language

• Commercially focused i.e. add value

Mastering ‘The 3 Cs’

The skills of business writing can be summarised by focusing on the 3Cs
 

In-house training in business writing skills

Financial Fluency has developed a focused course on business writing which can be tailored to your organisation.

Read our course description for more information at
www.financial-fluency.co.uk/financial-training-courses/professional-development/business-writing-skills

Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is an implementation of Microsoft’s Visual Basic, an event driven programming language and associated integrated development environment (IDE) which is built into most Microsoft Office applications.

VBA supersedes and expands on the capabilities of earlier application-specific macro programming languages such as Word’s WordBasic, and can be used to control almost all aspects of the host application, including manipulating user interface features, such as menus and toolbars, and working with custom user forms or dialog boxes.

VBA can also be used to create import and export filters for various file formats, such as ODF.

VBA is an interpreted language, meaning its instructions are run, or interpreted, when the source code is run. Despite its resemblance to many old BASIC dialects, VBA is not compatible with any of them except Microsoft Visual Basic, where source-code of VBA Modules can be directly imported.

Compatibility ends with Visual Basic Version 6; VBA is not compatible with VB.NET. VBA is proprietary to Microsoft and is not an Open standard.

You can find more about our Introduction to Excel VBA course here:
www.financial-fluency.co.uk/financial-training-courses/business-it-skills/introduction-to-excel-vba/

The benefits in in-house financial training courses

The majority of our training is delivered on an in-house basis to our clients, whether large, small, public or private. There are considerable benefits of training in-house as opposed to a public or open course.

We’ve outlined some of the benefits below. Please have a look and send an email or give us a call if you wish to discuss further.
 

Save costs

One of the most obvious benefits is that in-house training can be more cost effective:

• Lower cost per delegate – when compared with a public open house course for several delegates.

• Lower travel costs – we travel to you wherever you are. Why pay travel for every delegate to travel when you can just pay for one (the trainer)?

• No venue costs – if the course is held at your premises. Venue costs are always built into the cost of a public course.

• Control the subsistence budget – you choose! If you want top quality refreshments and lunch provide it, if you don’t then don’t.

Tailored training

One of the key advantages of in-house financial training is that the courses can be tailored, customised and focused on your business. We discuss with you in advance the issues facing your business and agree on relevant learning objectives for the course.

We spend time to understand your internal terminology so we can speak in your business language and help relate the training to your employees.

We can build tailored case studies with you, using your internal and business sector specific data. This all helps to increase the relevance of the training and enable your staff to translate the learning back into the workplace following the course.

As well as tailoring our existing courses we can build full bespoke courses in partnership with you. We will help you decide on course content, delivery style, course duration, timings and any other relevant factors in the training mix.

Continuing Professional Development (CPD)

Many of our clients use in-house training courses to meet the CPD needs of their professionally qualified employees, whether accountants, lawyers, engineers or any other profession.

Training venue

Don’t have the space internally? No problem! We can source a suitable local venue for you through our venue sourcing agency, within your budget.

Training equipment

Our presenters have all their own training equipment to deliver their courses. If you have a data projector and flip chart then great. If not we can provide.

Ideas for in-house training courses

We offer a selection of 30 existing financial training courses, use the menu of the left to browse. These often provide the starting point for discussions with our clients.

Discover the financial health of a company

The true health of a company cannot be ascertained from its bottom line alone. The real story can be discovered within the detail of its financial statements and by ‘making the numbers talk’.

To the untrained eye – balance sheets, profit and loss accounts and cash flow statements can be confusing in their own right.

Understanding how these statements interact, how they reflect the underlying business and how they can be distorted to show different results is essential training for non-finance professionals.

Finance for non-finance training

Through a combination of practical exercises and engaging instruction, our finance event will introduce you to the fundamental accounting concepts and terminology, which underpins financial reporting.

The course is interactive with opportunity for questions and discussion.

The course will help you to begin your journey of understanding financial reporting in practice.

Read more and request a provisional place at the following webpage:
www.financial-fluency.co.uk/financial-training-courses/open-training-courses/financial-awareness-training-for-non-finance/

The death of defined benefit pension schemes

Occupational pension schemes are rarely far from the news. From large scale frauds, such as with Robert Maxwell and the Mirror Group Scheme, to large corporate collapses with the resulting impact on pensioners, as with Rover Group, to the current unrest over changes to public sector schemes. The combination of improving life spans, poor investment returns in recent years and other changes such with the tax changes have put ever increasing burdens on Defined Benefit Schemes with the result that many are being closed or the rules are being amended. Most new schemes are now Defined Contribution Schemes.

Pension scheme accounts

With such fundamental importance to the hard working people that have saved for their retirement and the widespread public exposure involved it is more important than ever that the accounts produced by a pension scheme present a true and fair view and are clearly transparent to the members.

Pension scheme accounting terminology

However the pension schemes use a terminology all of their own and although accounting and auditing standards apply to these in the same way as other entities the complexities of the schemes mean that many struggle to fully understand how to correctly apply the standards to such schemes. The ASB has issued a SORP to give guidance on the accounting requirements and the APB has issued Practice Note 15 to give guidance on the application of auditing standards. Despite this guidance there are still a number of grey areas and experience and best practice come into play.

Experience in accounting and auditing pension schemes

Darren Leiser has a wealth of experience in accounting and auditing pension schemes. His audit experience involves working for over three years in a top five firm of Chartered Accountants purely on pension’s audit where he was exposed to a wide range of client including some of the largest schemes in the UK. He was also a technical manager at a top 30 firm where he was responsible for quality reviews throughout the firm on pension audit files, pensions lecturing and also design of their pension audit pack. Darren has numerous years of lecturing experience on pensions and is a member of the Pensions Research Accountants Group (PRAG) who wrote the SORP in conjunction with the ASB.

Pension schemes training course

Our upcoming pensions schemes course will cover the accounting requirements of the SORP and the specific audit guidance contained within Practice Note 15. The course will also go far deeper than this and cover practical issues for which little guidance exists in Practice Note 15 such as with reporting on contributions.

As well as giving the delegate a through grounding in both the theoretical and practical issues of accounting and auditing pension schemes there will also be guidance on making reports to the Pensions Regulator and an update on new pensions issues. This course is a must for anyone involved in accounting or auditing pension schemes. Pensions issues also are high in proprieties in the minds of most FD’s with cash flow issues and accounting under FRS 17 or IAS 19 and so a knowledge of pension schemes and the associated terminology would be very beneficial for company auditors too.

Read more about our Pension Scheme Auditing & Accounting Course