The course content covers working capital management topics tested in the Certified Management Accountant (CMA) Part 2 examination.
A significant amount of management time in many businesses, particularly small businesses, is devoted to assuring that there will be sufficient cash to pay employees, vendors, and creditors. While the expression “Cash is King” has some truth, a solid understanding of the inter-relationships between working capital components is necessary for all businesses to succeed in the long run.
Working capital is the current assets used in a business, which are typically financed by current liabilities. While the time frame for current assets and current liabilities is typically one year, working capital management has long-term implications for many firms.
Working capital management focuses on two basic questions: (1) What is the appropriate level of current assets for a firm to carry, both in total and for each specific group, and (2) how should current assets be financed.
The course is made up of 8 modules that examine working capital management at a macro and micro level. Starting with a discussion of a firm’s appetite for risk and the implications of having too much and too little working capital, the course then explores issues related to managing types of current assets, including cash, marketable securities, receivables, and inventory. The types of short-term credit to finance current assets are then covered, followed by a discussion of the costs of short-term credit.
The course content covers working capital management topics tested in the Certified Management Accountant (CMA) Part 2 examination.
Topics include: • Working capital risks and strategies. • Cash management. • Cash forecasts. • Marketable securities. • Receivables management. • Inventory management. • Short-term credit. • Costs of short-term credit.
Field of Study: Finance
Managing Director of CPE University, LLC
Tom Coghlan, CMA, MBA has worked at the intersection of accounting, information technology and decision making for over 30 years. His diverse set of experiences and roles include serving as: Founder of CPE University, LLC, a provider of online and in-person CPE programs in operational analysis, managerial accounting, decision making, and ethics. He is one of the top CMA exam review instructors in North America, and has helped hundreds of people prepare to take the CMA examination Founder of Appitur® Co., the developer of a mobile platform that provides exam prep companies with a branded app/web solution for their students to access study materials Business Fellow and Instructor at Villanova University, where he taught graduate and undergraduate courses in Accounting and Analytics, and was the Director of the Center for Business Analytics CFO and Director of Information Technology for a multi-national business unit of Imperial Chemical Industries Partner and Vice President of Client Services for FirstQuarter, Inc., where he led projects that helped clients including Cordis (division of Johnson & Johnson), Del Monte Foods, Alcon, Analog Devices, and Stantec maximize their technology investments Tom earned a BS degree in Business Administration from Drexel University, and an MBA from LaSalle University. Tom is a Certified Managerial Accountant (CMA), and passed the Certified Public Accounting (CPA) exam in Pennsylvania.
