'What you learn on… CIMA’s corporate accounting Mastercourses'

By David Parmenter BCom (Hons), FCA, a leading expert in: the development of winning KPIs, replacing the annual planning process with quarterly rolling planning, quick month-end processes and converting reporting to a decision-based tool. John Wiley & Sons has published five of his books. He has worked for Arthur Andersen, PwC, BP Oil, Ernst & Whinney and Waymark Solutions.

20 major mistakes made by accountants – and how to avoid them – www.cimamastercourses.com/TTMI
This twice-yearly course derives from a book of mine called Winning CFOs, which is now in its second edition.

The course is aimed at corporate accountants, ranging from financial accountants, management accountants, to financial controllers, finance managers and CFOs. It covers a range of best practices that I have identified from around the world.

The top 20 mistakes identified in this course have not changed for the past three to four years, which indicates that they are serious problems that accountants encounter.

One of these mistakes is giving annual entitlements to budget holders in the annual planning process – instead of funding them on a rolling quarterly basis. Another is budgeting in too much detail at account code level.

A third mistake is not producing daily and weekly decision-based reports, focusing instead on providing detailed monthly information.

And a fourth mistake is forecasting only to year-end. One mistake that surprises a lot of accountants is using the traditional calendar as a reporting tool.

Most modern accounts use four or five-week months, which is more systematic. And a last mistake is not investing enough time into leadership.

Implementing winning KPIs – www.cimamastercourses.com/KPIS
This course is aimed at people in HR, corporate accountants and senior managers. It’s designed to provide delegates with an understanding of how to implement winning key performance indicators (KPIs) in their organisations.

The course demonstrates that many of the current ways in which performance measures are designed are in fact flawed – and that KPIs need to be designed in a much more structured manner. The course is heavily workshop-based – with group exercises following the presentations.

The biggest misconception that I encounter among delegates on this course is that all performance measures are KPIs. But KPIs have seven specific characteristics – which we go through in the session – and all KPIs are non-financial. This is often quite a big shock to delegates.

Quick month-end reporting - www.cimamastercourses.com/QMER
A number of accountants have told me that this course can be life-changing. People who are used to working late nights for weeks suddenly move to a process that takes just three days.

Not only does this mean that they get home earlier, they are also able to deliver better services to the business managers throughout the month.

This is a hardcore corporate accounting course for financial management accountants, financial controllers and CFOs.

I have yet to find an organisation that cannot achieve day three reporting if they apply this methodology, developed from the better practices of hundreds of fast-reporting organisations.