That Blue Square Thing

BTEC First Business Unit 2 - Finance for Business

Note: this page was written for the 2012 BTEC First Award in Business. Although this still exists, I've not taught it for ages and the stuff here might be out of date. I'm leaving it here as an archive in case anyone finds it useful.
I was going to retire these pages in July 2021, but having looked at Google Analytics it seems people still use them. There's probably a business lesson there about knowing your client base or something...

Budgeting and Cash Flow Forecasts

Learning Aim B2: Understand the tools businesses use to plan for success

Businesses need to budget to have a chance of controlling their costs and making sure that they make a profit. Once a budget has been estimated budgetary control can then be used to monitor progress and make adjustments as necessary

PDF iconBudgets and Budgetary Control - slides

Cash Flow Forecasting

A cash flow forecast can be used to identify money flowing in and out of a business over a period of time.

This can be crucial for businesses - they need to make sure they have enough money to pay next months wages and still buy materials to be able to produce more products to sell - to make more money. Getting the balance right can be tricky.

It's all about the bottom line - quite literally.

PDF iconCash Flow Forecasting - slides with the theory

PDF iconCalculating Cash Flow - slides with examples

PDF iconPippi's Balloons - Pippi's costs

PDF iconCash Flow Forecast Table - a large table for use with a full CFF task

PDF iconPippi's Cash Flow Forecast - Pippi's costs worked through

The BBC Bitesize sitewiki link has some notes on cash flow which are worth a look. There's a video and test as well (although some of the questions get into ideas you don't really need to worry so much about for this course).