AAT Essentials - short courses

AAT Essentials is a range of courses providing short, sharp key skills training, to help delegates get ahead with essential business accounting knowledge.

The current courses are:

  • Making sense of financial documents
  • Budgeting for the small business
  • Managing cash flow, keeping your business healthy
  • Finance for non-financial managers

Developed for business people without an accounting and finance background, the courses provide practical, straight talking training, packed with the essentials of how to manage business finance more effectively. Each course is delivered in around seven hours and delegates will be given an AAT attendance certificate upon completion.

Register your interest in delivering AAT Essentials by filling out this short form.

Making sense of financial documents

A lot of customer and supplier documentation is required in day to day business.

This practical course helps you to understand the purpose of everything from invoices though to bank reconciliations. It shows you how to keep records that will keep business working effectively, and keep your accountant and the VAT inspector happy.

On completion, you will understand:

  • raising sales invoices  and credit notes
  • keeping a sales-day book and a purchases day-book, as well as customer accounts and supplier accounts
  • preparing customer statements
  • dealing with receipts from customers, trade and bulk discount
  • purchase invoices and credit notes against source documents
  • checking supplier statements and payments to suppliers
  • recording amounts received and payments made in the cash receipts book
  • how to calculate the bank balance
  • checking and updating the cash receipts book and cash payment book against the bank statement
  • how to reconcile the bank balance on the bank statement with the bank balance according to the cash receipts book and cash payment book.

Budgeting for the small business – planning and control

Implementing simple budgeting in business aids planning and enables businesses to monitor their performance and keep an eye out for danger signs.

This AAT Essential will help you to prepare budgets, make informed budgeting decisions and effectively communicate financial information (for example, to business partners or the bank).

On completion, you will understand:

  • what a budget is, when to budget and why businesses complete budgets
  • component parts of an operational budget and what an operational budget looks like
  • sources of information for figures in operational budgets
  • factors that influence figures in operational budgets
  • how to calculate figures for an operational budget.
  • component parts of a cash flow budget and what a cash flow budget look like
  • sources of information for figures in cash flow budgets
  • factors that influence figures in cash flow budgets
  • how to calculate figures for a cash flow budget
  • the budgeting process
  • the importance of completing budgets and how to use them.

Managing cash flow, keeping your business healthy

The availability of cash enables a business to survive and prosper and is the primary indicator of business health.

This AAT Essential will help improve you effectiveness at managing the inflow and outflow of cash, thus helping to protect the financial security of your business.

On completion, you will understand:

  • why cash is important in a business
  • timing of cash flows
  • importance of estimating likely cash flows pattern
  • how to prepare  and use a cash budget.
  • importance of comparing budgeted and actual cash flows
  • why differences should be investigated
  • possible reasons for differences and subsequent actions that can be taken
  • the risks of giving credit to customers
  • how to assess the creditworthiness of customers
  • how to guard against non-payment by credit customers
  • strategies to deal with late payers.

Finance for non-financial managers

Understanding financial documents, analysing financial performance and managing budgets is a part of many managers’ roles. However, this can be challenging without an accounting background.

This AAT Essential provides a basic grounding in key financial documents and processes to help you to meet this requirement more effectively.

On completion, you will understand:

  • what is included in a statement of financial position and in an income statement account
  • the differences between the two financial statements
  • how to interpret information from an income statement account and a statement of financial position
  • how to interpret using ratio analysis
  • how to use selected ratios to interpret information in financial statements
  • why cash doesn’t equal profit
  • what you can do to ensure there’s sufficient cash within your business.
  • how budgets help with day to day business management
  • how to interpret information in a budget.
Download the AAT Essentials courses overview (PDF)