This book takes the readers step by step through the key skills and knowledge, to enable them to take control of their budget. It is helpful for the reader to learn how to find out the rules governing their budget, why budgets overspend and underspend and how to make a bid for increased funding.

Praise for "Fast Close: A Guide to Closing the Books Quickly"

"Steve captures the essence of the problems affecting the financial close process within corporations of all sizes; from the period close of subledgers and general ledger through financial reporting, and the relationship and interdependencies of governance, people and technology. A must-read for the corporate controller."
--David Taylor, ACMA, MBA, VP Strategy, Trintech Inc.

""Fast Close: A Guide to Closing the Books Quickly," Second Edition is a must-read for today's busy controllers. Steven Bragg points out everything that can be done outside the close that you just never realized didn't actually have to be part of the month-end close process Very commonsensical approach "
--Kathleen Schneibel, mba, cpa, Controller/CFO for Hire, KMAS Consulting LLC

"A well-executed 'fast close' can bring many valuable benefits to any company, from improving organizational performance to transforming accounting executives from financial historians to trusted advisors. In Fast Close, Second Edition, Steve systematically breaks down the steps required to achieve a fast close in both public and private companies, providing financial executives with tips, checklists, and a cost-effective road map to implement fast close procedures in virtually any company."
--Matthew Posta, Esq., CPA, Vice President of Finance, Key Air, LLC

FROM THE FIRST EDITION

"This is an outstanding book in which Steve reveals his secrets to a fast close. Having personally experienced his (one-day) fast close for years and enjoyed the beneficial impact on my company, I highly recommend this book for all financial officers who desire to have a large, favorable impact on their company."
--Richard V. Souders, President and CEO, Kaba Workforce Solutions

"This is a terrific book and the best I have read on the subject. Scott covers the economics and management issues in professional services with great authority and insight." Peter Doyle, Professor of Marketing, Warwick Business School
"What I find generally so praiseworthy is the balance of theory and practical application that runs throughout the book. Clearly, Mark Scott is someone well versed in the whole range of management sciences, yet able to ground this perspective in the world of real experience. This book accomplishes this in a natural, coherent and very readable way." John Zweig, CEO Specialist Communications Businesses, WPP Group USA Inc.
Spanning a diverse range of activities from accountancy to marketing communications, the professional services industry now accounts for up to 170f employment in the Western economies and had worldwide revenues in 1999 of around $800 billion. It is continuing to experience one of the most spectacular growth rates of any Western-dominated industry and is progressively cornering an ever larger share of industrial value added.
Yet, it remains one of the most unanalysed and undocumented areas of business acitivity. It has been subjected to little scrutiny and received minimal attention from the capital markets. This book aims to change all that!
The Professional Services Firm is intended for three key audiences:
* managers and owners of professional services firms who want to understand the strategic options they face and how to improve their financial performance.
* investors who want to understand how they can exploit the largely untapped and misunderstood opportunity the industry holds.
* managers inindustrial and service sectors who want to understand how to emulate the two critical skills mastered by PSFs - hiring, developing and retaining the best intellectual talent available and exploiting collective knowledge to achieve differentiation and to-die-for margins.
This seminal book provides not only the first real insight into the structure, strategy and economics of this huge and prosperous industry but also an excellent guide to understanding the challenges and opportunities it faces. Mark C. Scott's analysis of the professional services industry is an indispensible guide for anyone involved in these types of companies wishing to maximize performance and profitability.

Quality costs help to show the importance of quality-related activities to management; they demonstrate the cost of non-quality to an organization; they track the causes and effects of the problem, enabling the working out of solutions using quality improvement teams, and then monitoring progress. As a technique in the introduction and development of TQM, quality costing is a powerful tool for enhancing a company's effectiveness. Quality Costing provides pragmatic advice on how to set about introducing and developing a quality costing system and using the data that emerges. This third edition (strengthened by additional data from a range of organizations) provides sound practical guidance on how to define, identify, collect, measure, analyse, report and use quality costs. This established text has proved invaluable to managers and quality professionals, students and academics alike - the new edition ensures its continued position as the leading book in the field.

Now updated with new measurement methods and new examples, How to Measure Anything shows managers how to inform themselves in order to make less risky, more profitable business decisions This insightful and eloquent book will show you how to measure those things in your own business, government agency or other organization that, until now, you may have considered "immeasurable," including customer satisfaction, organizational flexibility, technology risk, and technology ROI. * Adds new measurement methods, showing how they can be applied to a variety of areas such as risk management and customer satisfaction * Simplifies overall content while still making the more technical applications available to those readers who want to dig deeper * Continues to boldly assert that any perception of "immeasurability" is based on certain popular misconceptions about measurement and measurement methods * Shows the common reasoning for calling something immeasurable, and sets out to correct those ideas * Offers practical methods for measuring a variety of "intangibles" * Provides an online database (www.howtomeasureanything.com) of downloadable, practical examples worked out in detailed spreadsheets Written by recognized expert Douglas Hubbard creator of Applied Information Economics How to Measure Anything, Third Edition illustrates how the author has used his approach across various industries and how any problem, no matter how difficult, ill defined, or uncertain can lend itself to measurement using proven methods.

Governments are under increasing pressure to produceOCoand to demonstrateOCoresults in terms of their mission. Over the last decade, countries around the world have undertaken reforms with the aim of improving the relevance and effectiveness of public services and the quality of public sector management. Integrating Performance and Budgets showcases attempts by federal and state governments, as well as a mix of developed and developing countries, to introduce performance or results-oriented budgeting and management as a means to support better decision making and accountability."

High quality cost estimating gives a business leader confidence to make rational financial decisions. Whether you are a business leader or a cost estimating manager, you have a vested interest in understanding whether you can depend on your organisation's ability to generate accurate cost forecasts and estimates. But how can business leaders have confidence that the cost information that they are being provided with is of high quality? How can a cost estimating manager be sure that their team is providing high quality cost information? QinetiQ's Cost Engineering Health Check is used as a capability benchmarking tool to identify improvement opportunities within their clients' cost estimating capability, enabling them to focus on areas that have the potential to increase their competitiveness. High quality estimating leads to accurate budgets, a reduced potential for cost growth, accurate evaluation of risk exposure, and the opportunity to implement effective earned value management (EVM). The Cost Engineering Health Check employs a standardised competency framework that considers all aspects of cost estimating capability, and provides an objective assessment against both best practice and the industry standard. This framework is based on QinetiQ's long established, tried and tested, Knowledge Based Estimating (KBE) philosophy comprising Data, Tools, People and Process, with additional consideration given to cultural and stakeholder assessments.

The European regulation of financial reporting has substantially changed. Both the contents of accounting standards and the regulatory framework governing the setting of these standards are novel. In particular, the transfer of legislative competencies to a privately organized body, the International Accounting Standards Board, is a major deviation from formerly established national practice. This study explores the way of private-public governance from a political perspective. Building on models of democracy, the book develops a procedural account of legitimate authority and subsequently evaluates the new governance regime.

Over the past decade the financial and business environments have undergone significant changes. During the same period several advances have been made within the field of financial engineering, involving both the methodological tools as well as the application areas.

This comprehensive edited volume discusses the most recent advances within the field of financial engineering, focusing not only on the description of the existing areas in financial engineering research, but also on the new methodologies that have been developed for modeling and addressing financial engineering problems.

This book is divided into four major parts, each covering different aspects of financial engineering and modeling such as portfolio management and trading, risk management, applications of operation research methods, and credit rating models.

Handbook of Financial Engineering is intended for financial engineers, researchers, applied mathematicians, and graduate students interested in real-world applications to financial engineering.

This analytical volume looks at emerging fiscal trends and introduces the tools for effective financial management to American business professionals in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. This hard-hitting book is the most comprehensive reference to financial theory and practice for operating a business-profit or nonprofit-in the United States today. Content focuses on fiscally responsible behaviors and strategies, such as the introduction of a financial auditing system to troubleshoot potential problems before they occur, the creation of internal control and risk management systems, and step-by-step procedures for ensuring maximum transparency and accountability in every part of the organization. Author and financial expert Jerome B. McKinney has expanded on the previous edition of this popular financial text, offering the latest best practices in e-government applications, cash flow analysis, revenue forecasting, and fiscal health evaluations. This fourth edition also looks at sustainability, the role of monetary policies and fiscal policy, globalization and its competitive impact, and the massive growth of outsourcing. On a final note, the work explains how recent legislation has influenced the development, use, and implementation of performance measures holding government agencies more accountable for their actions. Provides step-by-step procedures for developing critical measurement indicators Shares the attributes of a good budgeting system Covers the new rules of financial reporting in both government and nonprofits Provides a comprehensive and holistic approach to auditing that shows how to minimize manipulation and increase reliability to users

A risk measurement and management framework that takes model risk seriously Most financial risk models assume the future will look like the past, but effective risk management depends on identifying fundamental changes in the marketplace as they occur. Bayesian Risk Management details a more flexible approach to risk management, and provides tools to measure financial risk in a dynamic market environment. This book opens discussion about uncertainty in model parameters, model specifications, and model-driven forecasts in a way that standard statistical risk measurement does not. And unlike current machine learning-based methods, the framework presented here allows you to measure risk in a fully-Bayesian setting without losing the structure afforded by parametric risk and asset-pricing models. * Recognize the assumptions embodied in classical statistics * Quantify model risk along multiple dimensions without backtesting * Model time series without assuming stationarity * Estimate state-space time series models online with simulation methods * Uncover uncertainty in workhorse risk and asset-pricing models * Embed Bayesian thinking about risk within a complex organization Ignoring uncertainty in risk modeling creates an illusion of mastery and fosters erroneous decision-making. Firms who ignore the many dimensions of model risk measure too little risk, and end up taking on too much. Bayesian Risk Management provides a roadmap to better risk management through more circumspect measurement, with comprehensive treatment of model uncertainty.

In today's climate the need for a closer understanding of the relationship between the two inter-related topics of risk management and finance on construction projects is becoming increasingly crucial to achieving the objectives of the investor, the end-user and the constructor and its supply chain, especially as interest in PFI and PPP arrangements continues to grow around the world. Risk and Financial Management in Construction shows the relationship between the Construction Project Manager's task of balancing time, cost and quality and the need to satisfy the client's requirements efficiently, effectively and professionally whilst at the same time contributing to the contractor's future sustainability. The book covers Risk Management describing the tools and methods to reduce the occurrence and consequences of risk, and the financial management of construction projects from raising funding, to contract strategy and through to estimating, budgeting and cost control. It includes a chapter covering international project risk, bringing together the issues of risk management, prime contracting, and PFI funding for construction projects undertaken away from the contractors main home market. Risk and Financial Management in Construction is aimed at those practising in, or studying to enter, the project management profession in providing a strategic and operational knowledge of these subjects allowing the reader easy access to the key points through a wide selection of models, checklists and easy to find lists in all of the key areas.

Strategy decision making and action used to be off limits to all but the select few at the very top of an organization. It was a largely cerebral activity focused on grand long-terms plans made at annual off-site retreats away from the daily challenges of the business. That is no longer the case. The current business environment does not wait for companies to slowly adjust in an annual meeting. The relentless pace of change renders today's long-term future tomorrow's history. Rapid innovations and ever-increasing complexities limit executives' ability to make decisions with perfect information. Does this mean strategy is no longer useful, or even feasible? No. Good strategists are needed now more than ever. But today's high-performing organizations think of strategy differently than in the past. These companies make strategy part of every manager's role; they strategize continuously and tackle strategic problems through individuals from all parts of the organization. Strategy in this new, fast-paced world is about diagnosing the diverse array of complex challenges confronting organizations, deciding on novel solutions to address those challenges, and delivering by taking action on those solutions. Including a novel organizational framework and never-before-published application examples, Strategy in 3D helps build these foundational skills and prepares the reader for success as a strategist in the 21st century.

In the knowledge economy, the value of corporations is directly related to their knowledge and intellectual capital. But broaden the perspective a little wider and you begin to see the possibilities: Think of cities, regions, even entire nations, in addition to the public sector. If intangibles and intellectual capital are important to the private sector, they are also important to the productivity and competitiveness of the public sector, and so to communities and nations as a whole. In this book, Editors Ahmed Bounfour and Leif Edivinsson have brought together the best minds in intellectual capital throughout the world to focus on a new and fertile area of research: measuring and managing the intellectual capital of communities. This is a creative and cutting-edge area of research that has the potential to change how public sector planning and development is done. Once there is a clear way to identify where wealth is created in a given region/nation, this process has the potential to reveal a huge knowledge repository in the public sector with a significant-but idle-potential for collective wealth creation-the wealth of nations in waiting.

This is the road map to a seven-figure business . . . in one year or less The word "entrepreneur" is today's favorite buzzword, and any aspiring business owner has likely encountered an overwhelming number of so-called "easy paths to success." The truth is that building a real, profitable, sustainable business requires thousands of hours of commitment, grit, and hard work. It's no wonder why more than half of new businesses close within six years of opening, and fewer than 5 percent will ever earn more than $1 million annually. 12 Months to $1 Million condenses the startup phase into one fast-paced year that has helped hundreds of new entrepreneurs hit the million-dollar level by using an exclusive and foolproof formula. By cutting out the noise and providing a clear and proven plan, this roadmap helps even brand-new entrepreneurs make decisions quickly, get their product up for sale, and launch it to a crowd that is ready and waiting to buy. This one-year plan will guide you through the three stages to your first $1 million: * The Grind (Months 0-4): This step-by-step plan will help you identify a winning product idea, target customers that are guaranteed to buy, secure funding, and take your first sale within your first four months. * The Growth (Months 5 - 8): Once you're in business, you will discover how to use cheap and effective advertising strategies to get your product to at least 25 sales per day, so you can prove you have a profitable business. * The Gold (Months 9-12): It's time to establish series of products available for sale, until you are averaging at least 100 sales per day, getting you closer to the million-dollar mark every single day. Through his training sessions at Capitalism.com, Ryan Daniel Moran has helped new and experienced entrepreneurs launch scalable and sustainable online businesses. He's seen more than 100 entrepreneurs cross the seven-figure barrier, many of whom go on to sell their businesses. If your goal is to be a full-time entrepreneur, get ready for one chaotic, stressful, and rewarding year. If you have the guts to complete it, you will be the proud owner of a million-dollar business and be in a position to call your own shots for life.

This book compares the basic skillset of domestic purchasing to that of global purchasing. It provides a very detailed blueprint and best practices guide for avoiding costly mistakes and improving purchasing effectiveness. It also details supply chain globalization impacts on freight, logistics, customs issues, managing foreign suppliers, risk mitigation, and profit potential improvement. It differentiates itself from other books as being more comprehensive, detailed, and broad reaching into every aspect of purchasing on an international scale.

This volume, originally published in 1995, examines the mechanisms by which businesses that have the capacity to grow - whether in terms of output, innovation or export - acquire the cash that enables growth. Addressing an issue of central importance to the competitiveness of firms and economies, this book draws together research by leading academics in the area. Throughout, research studies develop the themes of market failure, finance gaps and failure of demand. They also bring out the linkages between the financing choices facing the growing firm and the issues of organisation and of corporate governance that have to be address during the process of growth and maturity. Contributors challenge financial orthodoxy throughout, providing coherent analyses of the difficulties faced in the finance of the growing enterprise, from its early dependence on banks and informal finance to the pinnacle of a stock exchange listing.

Over the past 40 years, Tom Stanley and his daughter Sarah Stanley Fallaw have been involved in research examining how self-made, economically successful Americans became that way. Despite the publication of The Millionaire Next Door, The Millionaire Mind, and others, myths about wealth in American still abound. Government officials, journalists, and many American still tend to confuse income with wealth. A new generation of household financial managers are hearing from so-called experts in personal financial management due to the proliferation of the cottage industry of financial blogs, podcasts, and the like. In many cases, these outlets are simply experiences shared without science, case studies without data based on broader populations. Therefore, the authors decided to take another look at millionaires in the United States to examine what changes could be seen 20 years after the original publication of The Millionaire Next Door. In this book the authors highlight how specific decisions, behaviors, and characteristics align with the discipline of wealth building, covering areas such as consumption, budgeting, careers, investing, and financial management in general. They include results from quantitative studies of wealth as well as case studies of individuals who have been successful in building wealth. They discuss general paths to building wealth on your own, focusing specifically on careers and lifestyles associated with each path, and what it takes to be successful in each.

Finance is the study of value and how it is determined. Individuals, small businesses and corporations regularly make use of value determinations for making strategic decisions that affect the future outcomes of their endeavors. The importance of accurate valuations cannot be overestimated; valuing assets too highly will lead to investing in assets whose costs are greater than their returns, while undervaluing assets will lead to missed opportunities for growth. In some situations (such as a merger or an acquisition), the outcome of the decision can make or break the investor. The need for solid financial skills has never been more pressing than in today's global economy. The Fundamental Principles of Finance offers a new and innovative approach to financial theory. The book introduces three fundamental principles of finance that flow throughout the theoretical material covered in most corporate finance textbooks. These fundamental principles are developed in their own chapter of the book, then referred to in each chapter introducing financial theory. In this way, the theory is able to be mastered at a fundamental level. The interactions among the principles are introduced through the three precepts, which help show the impact of the three principles on financial decision-making. This fresh and original approach to finance will be key reading for undergraduate students of introduction to finance, corporate finance, capital markets, financial management and related courses, as well as managers undertaking MBAs.

Praise for Modeling Structured Finance Cash Flows with Microsoft(R) Excel(R)

"You can roll up your sleeves, dive into this book, and shortly thereafter, you have a full-blown honest-to- goodness working model of a transaction. This sure beats the old method of slaving at the feet of gurus for years in the hopes that they'll throw you a scrap. It almost feels as though Allman has given away a shortcut through the 'hazing' period of learning, but then I am grateful I have a resource with which to train new analysts or remind myself how some things work."
--Omar Haneef, Global Securitized Markets, Citigroup

"Allman has written a book that reveals to the reader/user a robust framework for using Excel to model structured finance transactions. Both seasoned cash flow modelers and those new to, or curious about, how structured finance transactions are analyzed can benefit from this book."
--Henry Wilson, Bond Insurance Company Analyst

"A powerful, concise, and tiered approach. It's a bedrock foundation to build on for both the art and science of structured finance modeling. An excellent platform from which to leverage your financial knowledge and personal capital."
--William Preinitz, Managing Director, Citigroup

"An essential tool for any credit officer wishing to gain a general or in-depth understanding of cash flow modeling for new or existing deals."
--Joseph B. Keener, Structured Portfolio Management, Citigroup London

Written by industry expert Keith Allman, this well-rounded resource provides detailed guidance on constructing one of today's most adaptable models--the cash flow model. Filled with in-depth insight, expert advice, and illustrative examples, Modeling Structured Finance Cash Flows with Microsoft Excel explains individual functions and formulas, while also examining the theory behind the spreadsheets. Each chapter begins with a discussion of theory, followed by a section called "Model Builder," in which Allman translates the theory into functions and formulas. In addition, the companion CD-ROM features all of the modeling exercises, as well as a final version of the model that is created in the text.

By combining specific application instruction with theory, Modeling Structured Finance Cash Flows with Microsoft Excel will teach you skills that can be instantly applied to professional-level modeling.

Despite the growing importance of funds through corporate bonds, most investigations on the short-term effects of certain events on firm value are only conducted for stocks. Thus, research provides an incomplete view on how firm value is truly affected. The author fills this gap and focuses his research on corporate debt. The first section of the book provides a comprehensive overview of existing methodologies to calculate abnormal bond returns. Subsequently, two frameworks are selected to investigate the importance of corporate debt when empirically assessing major corporate events: Synergy disclosure at M&A announcements and debt offerings through reopenings. Both provide evidence for the necessity to regard corporate debt to fully assess changes in firm value.

FROM ONE OF NIELSEN'S TOP 50 POWER MOMS COMES ADVICE YOU CAN TAKE TO THE BANK--LITERALLY
Crystal Paine, who has helped busy women everywhere take control of their finances, presents her most effective strategies designed for families of all sizes and income levels.
With hundreds of inspiring "why didn't I think of that?" TIPS, plus WORKSHEETS, Paine breaks down your goals into easy, manageable steps so you can:
- Achieve a complete financial makeover
- Set up a realistic budget
- Never pay retail
- Slash your grocery bill
- Organize your time & your home
- Use coupons wisely
- Pay with cash only
- Live simply
- Become debt free
- Choose contentment
- Make every dollar count

This book presents an account of legal, economic and managerial perspectives on governance in situations of financial distress and insolvency. It uses detailed real-life case studies of executive decision making to explore and illustrate the discussion. The book deals with the emergence of corporate governance as a framework of checks and balances on executive decision-making, before moving to the core issues of governance during financial distress and insolvency and alternative informal and formal rescue. Identifying and reviewing turnaround strategies and formal rescue processes available to management, the book also examines the increasing importance of creditors and their impact on business decision-making. The book provides a detailed interpretation of governance in five mega insolvencies in retail and construction following the financial crisis in 2008. It also sets out a methodology which is designed to inform and help those readers seeking to analyse and interpret director behaviour in such circumstances.

When Profit from the Core was published in 2001, it became an international bestseller, helping hundreds of companies find their way back to profitable growth after the bursting of the Internet bubble. The 2007 global financial meltdown reaffirmed the perils of pursuing heady growth through untested strategies, as firms in industries from finance to retailing to automobiles strayed too far from their core businesses and suffered the consequences. In this updated edition of Profit from the Core, authors Chris Zook and James Allen show that a renewed focus on the core is more critical than ever as firms seek to rebuild their competitive advantage coming out of the downturn--and that a strong core will be the foundation for successful expansion as the economy recovers. Based on more than ten years of Bain & Company research and analysis and fresh examples from firms responding to the current downturn, the book outlines what today's executives and managers need to do now to revitalize their core, identify the next wave of profitable growth, and build on it successfully. Zook and Allen explain how companies can: * Develop a strong, well-defined core and use it to establish a leadership position * Follow the golden rule of strategy: discourage competitors from investing in your core * Assess whether your core is operating at its full potential * Uncover hidden assets in your core that provide the seeds for new growth * Find a repeatable formula to apply core business strengths in adjacent markets Building on powerful and proven ideas to meet today's formidable business challenges, Profit from the Core is the back-to-basics strategy field guide no manager should be without.