Go to MEP Orientation Continuous Personal and Professional Development Managing and Leading Successful Change Developing and Maximizing Leadership Potential Process Improvement Health Systems: Concepts, Design and Performance Managing and Leading Successful Change Building Community Involvement Human Resources Management IT Skills Programme and Project Management
	Finance and Administration	For this module, view
		Introduction
		Learning outcomes
		Topics covered

Learning units

Learning unit 1: Organizational planning

Planning is the process of setting goals and choosing the means to achieve those goals. Without plans, managers cannot know how to organize people and resources effectively. Too often, faulty plans affect the future of the entire organization.  This unit explores the different types of planning: strategic, organizational, tactical and operational, and the process of setting organizational goals including the  potential barriers faced in achieving them.

Learning unit 2: Cost estimation

Management accountants must understand cost behavior in order to support their planning and control activities. The ability to predict fixed and variable costs as a function of forecasted activity levels is important for several reasons. Managers need to understand the economic consequences of alternative course of action, such as introducing new products or altering the production level and mix of existing products.  This unit focuses on the principles of cost estimation including account classification and regression analysis, and the elements of cost accounting systems.

Learning unit 3: Budgeting

Budgets are formal quantitative statements of the resources set aside for carrying out planned activities over given period of time. As such, they are widely use means of planning and controlling activities at every level of the organization. There are a number of reasons for their wide usage. This unit will introduce you to the types of budgeting, the budgeting process, the role of budget personnel, factors which hamper the budgeting process. It will also familiarize you with financial control tools through exercises.

Learning unit 4: Risk management and contingency planning

In making decisions, all managers must weigh alternatives, many of which involve future events that are different to predict, such as a competitors reaction to a new price list, interest rates in three years, or the reliability of a new supplier. Contingency planning is an important type of planning. It is the determination of alternative courses of action to be taken if an intended plan of action is unexpectedly disrupted or rendered inappropriate. This unit  considers the 2 interrelated areas which will familiarize you with identifying risks in decision-making,  managing the risk and formulating appropriate contingency plans.

Learning unit 5: Project and activity identification

A project is a pattern of relationships - many interwoven, simultaneous relationships-through which people, under the direction of managers, pursue their common goals. These goals are the products of the decision-making processes that we introduced as planning. The goals that managers develop through planning are typically ambitious, far- reaching, and open-ended. The unit will focus you on how to identify and design potential project and activities, the structure of projects. downsizing and effective methods for coordination.

Learning unit 6: Management control system

Without control, an organization would have any indication of how well it was performing in relation to its goals. The purpose of control is to provide managers with an assessment of where the organisation is in comparison to where it is supposed to be at a certain point in time and in terms of one or more indicators of performance. This unit will introduce you to aspects of control including steps in the control process, forms of organizational and operations control, styles of control and managing the control process.