Management training courses include more and more subject areas. However, one thing which still seems to get left to the experts is anything to do with accountancy. This is partly because an incredible number of otherwise intelligent people seem to go into a blind panic when confronted by numbers.

In smaller businesses, it is not possible to separate everything out into departments. Even where there is a specific financial director and a department of numerical wizards, the fact is that all departments and particularly managers need to be aware of the financial implications of their actions. One of the clearest examples of this is cash flow.

Whenever the company’s buyers are negotiating purchases, they need to consider all the implications of the deals they do. For example, they may have been offered a heavily discounted price on the basis that they order six month’s worth of an item in one go. If the payment terms are the normal 30 days after delivery, this could cause real problems for cash flow. If the company is cash rich, this might be a good deal, but the majority of businesses these days operate on a rather tighter basis. Of course, the question of storage and related costs also has to be considered.