Financial Analysis and Management Control
Financial Analysis and Management Control is an intermediate-level course of 5 lessons (about 1 h 24 min), with 15 exercises and 15 quiz questions. Prerequisites: Business Metrics and KPIs. Exercises run in the browser, with nothing to install.
- Business analytics
- Intermediate
- 5 lessons
- 1 h 24 min
- 15 exercises
- Exercises run in the browser
The course in brief
This course provides the analysis tools of a management controller: building an income statement from accounting entries, analyzing budget variances, forecasting cash flow, judging product profitability and producing a monthly dashboard. Calculations are done with pandas on fictional data, with equivalent tasks in Excel.
What you will be able to do
- Group accounting entries into an income statement and compute simplified management balances
- Calculate and qualify budget variances and break a revenue variance down into price and volume effects
- Build a cash flow plan with payment terms and quantify a financing need
- Calculate contribution margin, break-even point and margin of safety, and decide the future of a product
- Produce a monthly financial dashboard with year-to-date totals, statuses and a landing forecast
Syllabus: 5 lessons
- Group accounting entries into management line items based on the account number
- Build a monthly income statement with pandas
- Calculate gross margin, value added, EBE and operating income in a simplified version
Chart of accounts and line itemsIncome statementIntermediate management balances
- 02
Budget and Variance Analysis
- Calculate and qualify variances between actuals and budget (favorable, unfavorable)
- Break a revenue variance down into a volume effect and a price effect
- Select the significant variances to comment on
- 03
Cash Flow Forecasting
- Distinguish revenue from cash receipts, and expenses from cash disbursements
- Build a monthly cash flow plan with payment terms
- Spot tight months and quantify a financing need
- 04
Product Profitability: Contribution Margin and Break-Even Point
- Calculate the contribution margin and its rate by product
- Calculate the break-even point, the margin of safety and the break-even date
- Understand the effect of fixed cost allocation on decisions
- 05
Financial Dashboard and Year-End Forecast
- Choose and calculate the indicators of a monthly financial dashboard
- Calculate year-to-date totals, attainment rates and status
- Revise the year-end forecast (landing) from actuals
Final project
Half-Year Management Review of a Fictional SME
You are the management controller of a fictional trading SME. From monthly entries, a budget and product sales data generated in Python, produce the first-half management review: monthly income statement, variance analysis with price and volume effects, cash flow plan for the second half, profitability by product, and a dashboard with the annual landing.
Deliverables
- A reproducible Python script or notebook (data generated with a fixed seed)
- The monthly income statement by line item with a totals check
- The qualified variance table and the price / volume breakdown of revenue
- The second-half cash flow plan with the financing need
- The profitability analysis by product (MCV, break-even point, drop simulation)
- A one-page dashboard with landing and a management commentary
Assessment criteria
- The line items come from a documented mapping table and the totals are checked
- The favorable or unfavorable direction of variances takes the nature of the lines into account
- Payment terms and opening balances are modeled in the cash flow
- Product decisions rely on the MCV and on genuinely avoidable costs
- Cumulative rates are computed on the sums and the landing assumptions are written down
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to be an accountant to follow this course?
No. The course presents the necessary accounting concepts (account classes, management balances) in a simplified, analysis-oriented version. It assumes the basics from the Business Indicators and KPIs course (DA2).
Does the course use Excel or Python?
Both: the main calculations are run in Python with pandas, and some lessons offer an equivalent task in Excel using the French-language functions.
Are the intermediate management balances presented in full?
The course gives a simplified version (margin, value added, EBE, operating income) for analysis. The full definition includes other items, which are flagged in the lesson.
Are the figures in the exercises real?
No, all companies and data are fictional, built so that every result can be verified.
This course, told for your job
Say what you want to be able to do: “Financial Analysis and Management Control” takes its place in your path, with examples from your field. The concepts stay those of the course.