Business Finance

1. Basic understanding of financial elements

a) Connotation of Income and Cash Flow and key differences

Income: The firm's income is calculated by measuring all of its costs and removing it off the corporation's sales. It represents a company's real profit and used as a very important tool for assessing and making decisions.

Cash flow: It provides a real of a company's solvency situation and where the cash is absorbed throughout the organisational (Robson, Young and Power, 2017). At a given point in time, cash flow illustrates the real amount of money accessible with both the company. There are three places of income, i.e.: operating activity showing which revenue increase or flow from either the storage area, putting money behaviour reflecting the purchase and sale of both the assets, and funding exercise informs abut payments or earnings problem.

Disparity: Profit represents the disparity between firm's revenue and expenses, whereas cash flow reflects the business's capital base and capital available for daily activities. If a business earns funds and incur costs, this does not imply that perhaps the business's money will actually reduce. Are both required for both the firm's plan.

b) Denotation of Working Capital, Accounts Receivables, Accounts Payables and Inventory

Working Capital: Management of liquidity is of the key function of finance experts. Liquidity is defined by the calculation and deduction of the organization's current assets as well as its current liabilities (Wang and Hsu, 2013). It represents the funds required for an institution's frequent activities. The optimistic fund is generally advised when current assets outweigh current liabilities.

Account receivables: The proceeds to be received form customers is recognised as Accounts receivables: organisation supply the products and services on credit to reliable customers (Pietrzak, 2013). these customers pay the due amount after a certain period. accounts receivables are counted as current assets for a company.

Payable accounts: It reflects the amount to be paid to vendors or creditors. there is type of Lenders are a company's current liabilities.

Inventory: Company retains several stock of the products which it sold in the marketplace, that is named a database that is the organisation’s asset. It consists of raw product, WIP stocks and closing stock.

c) How cash flow of entity impacted by fluctuation in working capital

Each shift in working capital elements affect the cash flow of company. key principles for this: any rise in current assets will diminish the liquidity and vice versa, ii) any spike in current liabilities will boost the cash flows. it is expressed as upwards and downward adjustments in current assets and current liabilities in the operational portion of cash flow system (Henttu-Aho and Järvinen, 2013). For instance, if the business's accounts receivables are increasing than it reflects that company's collection period is extended therefore no cash introduced into the business.

2. Applying the above mentioned concepts in the situation of Bright Lawns Ltd.

Profit: Last year's Bright Lawns Ltd EBIT were £ 5 m that is quite favourable in terms of financial aspects. it is expected that the demand of company's product to grow in upcoming year. the gross revenues have been over £50 million as well. As a result, the financial performance performs well in terms of profitability and sales according to from last year data accessible. The major financial challenge must not be ignored by the experts of company which is enhancement of long term debts. It had long term debt of £16 million last year that increased by £2 million for the current year and in total it would have to pay extra interest on £18 million for upcoming year. The company must take steps to decide the best capital structure and should put efforts to decrease its liabilities. Simmo believes entity want more capital to reduce debt, but it can be challenging for the entity as raise money through equity would be costly in this case as they will accept lower returns to invest in a business with increased debt due to high risk factor. The high debt status is risky for business as it can impact BLL's net profitability due to raise in interest payments.

Cash Flows: In the company that manufactures fountains and associated products, BLL has taken a 30 percent interest. This payment would affect the cash flow of the organization as the money leaves BLL for the charges paid in full. It also charged £ 8 m as an investment of £ 10 m which is the price of the purchase. But that will only occur if there is a total cash deal with this contract. It is commonly known that no business acquires too much cash and normally takes out loans from the bank. This is a risky business as the leverage is now growing, and new debt will make things more challenging Therefore, buying a business is probably not wrong, and if the merger is made after considering the efficiencies among them, there are several benefits for the same. Another advantage is that the current money with both the purchased business always comes with such a transaction when a business is bought and thus the cash flow will rise.

Working Capital: The organisation currently has two clients, i.e. BricoFrance and C&P. It sold C&P on a credit-based basis a good value of £ 1.5 million. BLL is also having trouble with the conflict over shipments worth £ 2 million with BricoFrance. BLL's invoice receivables are thus on the increase and therefore no money is flowing into the company that will improve the liquidity and thus negatively affect the company's liquidity and financial condition (Segun and Olamide, 2015).

3. Actions required to improve the cash flow position of company with better capital working capital management

The business faces a lot of issues on cash flow problems. To boost the profitability and activities of the company, it requires a major focus on key areas such as debtors, stocks, accounts payable, etc. Here are some measures which BLL should follow to boost its liquidity with better working capital management:

Managing accounts payable or creditors: BLL can attempt to effectively control the borrowers as the rise in accounts payable increases the cash flow as cash can stay in the firm for a longer period (Edwards, Schwab and Shevlin, 2015). So, as it will enhance their financing process, they can ask the providers to give a decent time to pay home for the products held on loans. But the lenders should be paid late and should not hesitate much.

Rigorous debtor’s principles: BLL is still quite conservative in seeking the debtors ' duties, but now they have to be little stringent and they should intervene to get cash from C&P and other debtors. Business can provide early repayment opportunities (Rainer and et. al., 2013). The business must also solve the BricoFrance confrontation as a matter of urgency.

Inventory management: BLL is grappling with a £ 1.5 million dispute, which is why it have to temporarily close one of sites. The business must retain the same inventory degree after refresh rate, so inventory needs to be a priority right today.

Assessment of increased debt: BLL must try to limit debt or even earn interest pay-outs quickly so that potential sanctions can be avoided. It will improve BLL's operating capital

Part 2

Executive summary

This part of the report focuses on the various methods to creating a business's plan, i.e. both conventional and modern, or their advantages and drawbacks. It also addresses how to plan a strategy and how BoatWater Plc may use different needs to handle its expenditures in the potential and which approach is more suitable for them.

1. Aim of Budget formation and diversity among various budgeting methods

Purpose of Budget Preparation:

Businesses are preparing expenditures to calculate as well as predict expenses and costs. Monitoring the various departments within the organization is an important part and behaves as a baseline for reliability measurement (Chan, Tong and Zhang, 2013). Budget assists administrators in making decisions and promotes the business's main goals. Two financial budget methods are listed below:

a) Traditional Budgeting Approach

This budget is planned using the previous spending plan. In order to design monthly expenses, past numbers is used and, depends entirely on the market, financial and business situation, capital costs are predicted by making changes within these costs.

Pros: Traditional approach provides a comprehensive structure for the new budget and serves as a guide to render forecasting easier. This takes less time because in the previous budget, only certain variations need to be made during the process. This also assist to decentralize as well as, while retaining certain requirements, gives managers freedom.

Cons: There may be many mistakes in data entry and inefficiencies may increase and there may be higher chances of manipulation to make the image more appealing.

b) Alternative Budgeting Approaches

Rolling budget: This is a kind of budget that is constantly being created. During the year, the projections are made on a daily basis (Jiang and Penman, 2013). Assume an organization is planning a plan for Jan until Dec 2019, as soon as Jan 2019 comes to an end, this can be added to the plan for Jan 2020.

Pros: The primary advantage of the rolling budget is that it is altered as it is confronted by current circumstances, if economic recession or retrenchment, lack of purchases, etc., and the other is that it makes it look like that of a template to the spending budget and not an unmitigated piece of advice.

Cons: Since it is constantly being ready, the spending plan takes a great deal of time as well as the objectives can continue to be updated for the staff that can dishearten them.

Zero based budget: All estimates are formulated in details and that there is no justification for this plan (Beattie, 2014). It is ready from the beginning and is regarded very deeply of each cost or expenditure. Any estimate of cash flows, revenues and expenses will be made again.

Pros: This spending plan is very precise and effective, offering better financing and asset distribution, and following a top-down approach.

Cons: It appears to take the largest amount of time as well as resources to analyse everything from outset. Some workers even need to be offered instruction for it.

Activity-based budgets: Each activity will be clearly defined and assessed within operation money management, and instead budget will be rendered according to various activities. It is completed an attempt to simplify the method.

Pros: It improves cost administrators by taking the price of each exercise into consideration. It also. flexibility and increases efficiency.

Cons: For short term perspective this budgeting method remain effective but for it is not reliable for long term business objectives.

2. Application of above methods and cost management

BoatWater Plc is presently utilizing traditional techniques to form its expenditure budget, but according to the current situation, the chief financial officer is worried with this method and feels a need to change the method until the company undergoes some major operational changes. Therefore, the BoatWater Plc uses the prior plan for this and is just doing some adjustments to estimate the company's expenditures and revenues. In the scenario that the business plans to open new shops in the Netherlands and also in Germany, it is noted. For the company, this is a significant organizational shift, and for this reason it has to issue nearly 30 ships. The organization now needs to take several steps to change its methods of budgeting. If the company will continue to use the method, then:

The prior expenditure was based on eight activities, i.e. 5 in France and 3 in the UK, as well as the organisation presently has 145 workers in sum. The expenses will include: increased wage costs for employees who work in outlets, leases, transportation, 30-boat implementation fees, advertising, outlet materials and services. According to these 8 activities, expenditures and revenues are expected. But now there are three new outlets added by the BoatWater Plc. On both the basis of 11 activities (8–Old and 3 –New), all expenditures and profits will increasing and change. In the plan that has to be projected, all these costs would will.

Thus, if any alternate method such as rolling, exercise-based or ZBB is used by the client. If BoatWater Plc uses rolling financial planning method, it will be useful as this tax changes according to the rapidly changing scenario or major administrative changes are going via BoatWater. There will be several kinds of costs throughout the auction process that will be unanticipated and then they can continue to refine them on a continuous basis on both the budget. Example: If the costs of BoatWater were calculated at £ 100 million in the couple of days of July but the expenditures actually suffered were £ 140 million, then some costs can be increased in the next budget to make it more accurate. If the business goes to ZBB, it can evaluate and classify all forms of costs that will be incurred in the potential. There are fewer opportunities of mistakes and much more precise forecasting. Instance: With the outlets, there will be additional costs of salary, rent and ships, so it can readily be added again to the expenditure without actually making or any kind of changes as in the traditional way.

3. Assessment and advise, if Traditional budgeting or alternative budgeting system is suitable

The alternative budgeting technique assist the organisation in order to concise the financial requirement of business in more significant and contingent manner. This will help the financial experts to amend the financial plans by considering the current trends. In this budgeting technique BoatWater Plc can sort the financial requirement with more strategic manner.

The rolling or constant type of expenditure budget is much nicer than that of the set one as it will assist to plan according to the evolving consumer, industry and business cases. It can be amended whenever required by the company (Glaum and et. al., 2013). Businesses can also rely on tight-term goals. But the business has no choice and breadth for any adjustments under conventional method. The organization can use multi-financial metrics under the alternative approaches. For instance: Rather than setting targets using traditional method, the rolling technique allows the workers to set comparative objectives that encourage them as well as launch the friction of reaching the fixed figures. This brought staff growth alternatives and helps gain market share.

Conclusion

On the basis of above discussion, it can be resulted that organisations must analyse the key financial aspects in order to make effective decision making and organisational process. The liquidity of company directly impacts upon working capital and effective working capital management is the key source of boosting the daily operations. the second part clearly presents the effectiveness of budget formation that helps in decision making and strategic planning.

References

• Derrien, F. and Kecskés, A., 2013. The real effects of financial shocks: Evidence from exogenous changes in analyst coverage. The Journal of Finance, 68(4), pp.1407-1440. 
• Robson, K., Young, J. and Power, M., 2017. Themed section on financial accounting as social and organizational practice: exploring the work of financial reporting. Accounting, Organizations and Society. 56. pp.35-37.
• Wang, T. and Hsu, C., 2013. Board composition and operational risk events of financial institutions. Journal of Banking & Finance. 37(6). pp.2042-2051.
• Pietrzak, Å»., 2013. Traditional versus activity-based budgeting in non-manufacturing companies. Social sciences. 82(4). pp.26-37.
• Henttu-Aho, T. and Järvinen, J., 2013. A field study of the emerging practice of beyond budgeting in industrial companies: an institutional perspective. European Accounting Review. 22(4). pp.765-785.
• Segun, A. and Olamide, F. T., 2015. The global debate on budgeting: Empirical evidence from Nigeria. Business Management Review. 13(1).
• Edwards, A., Schwab, C. and Shevlin, T., 2015. Financial constraints and cash tax savings. The Accounting Review. 91(3). pp.859-881.
• Rainer, R. K., Cegielski, C. G., Splettstoesser-Hogeterp, I. and Sanchez-Rodriguez, C., 2013. Introduction to information systems: Supporting and transforming business. John Wiley & Sons.
• Chan, K. C., Tong, J. Y. and Zhang, F. F., 2013. Accounting research in the Asia–Pacific region: an update. Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting. 41(4). pp.675-694.

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