Sharpen your skills as a Controller, CFO, treasurer or analyst, or as a professional in public practice advising clients. You’ll appreciate the mix of practical tips and substantial depth in this course. Participating in group and break-out sessions, you’ll work through in-depth, realistic cases, but don’t worry, you don’t have to write down your answers! And, you’ll interact with peers who share their wide range of skills and experience.  Over 3,000 accountants have take versions of this course in Canada and other countries.  This course is the companion course to Practical Tips for Controller & CFOs.  The course was created and is presented by an experienced CFO, with extensive real-life insight. This course contains 1.5 hours of ethics content for those Canadian provinces which have verifiable PD ethics hours requirements (2 hours in the Self -Study video course, see opposite.)

​

This course material is also available on our website as shorter courses on the five key topics in the full course, as follows:

​

Ethics - Where The Rubber Meets The Road

Practical Tips to Improve Your Internal Financial Reporting

Sharpen Your Business Loan Negotiation

Contract Review Tips for Accountants Skills

Practical Foreign Exchange Management

​

More than 80% of the course content applies outside Canada, so it is of interest to accountants from anywhere in the world.

​

What you’ll learn

​

• Improve the relevancy of your financial reporting to users – this case will help you provide better and more useful information to report users

• Negotiating an offer to finance from a bank – gain practical tips on responding to a very realistic bank offer. How should it be assessed? How can you persuade the bank to revise it in your favour?

• Review a contract – you review contracts from time to time, how can this be done more effectively?

• Resolve ethical dilemmas in a practical way

• Manage foreign exchange risk, practically – from an accountant’s perspective, not a banker’s

• Learn how to gain the information you really need on key qualities when interviewing candidates

 

Who will benefit

 

Controllers, CFOs, directors of finance, treasurers and accounting managers (or their advisors) in small to medium-sized companies: you will gain practical tips for your daily work. Accountants from large companies, government and not-for-profits also find the course useful. In addition, it is helpful for people moving toward these roles.
 

Course Feedback​

​

Video

​​

• I enjoyed the course and found it very useful

• I was a 30 plus year Corporate/Commercial Banker and was impressed by the practicality of the section regarding dealing with a financial institution.  There were numerous suggestions throughout the presentation that would aid in getting a more beneficial arrangement with your Bank

• I liked the practical cases that helped me understand better

• I like concrete examples of negotiating with the bank. and dealing with CEOs re ethics to improve: always need more concrete real life examples that we can relate to

• Thank you - I really enjoyed this and many other of your courses!

• Very interesting tips

• Biggest take away: Enjoyed the foreign exchange and ethics sessions

• Ethic chapter… it was quite an interesting chapter as I already had a few ethical questions in my career.

• Thank you for all the useful information and view of these topics from a practical perspective.

• I liked the format of the course and the fact that it's more practical than theoretical.

• It's a great course, different from the usual and it's more related to the work in my point of view.

• I liked the jokes even though it was online.

• I found this very interesting and was a good refresher with some additional insight.

• Very interesting course – I really enjoyed the practical advice and real life examples

• I have really appreciate listening to the course.

• The main lesson is that most people don’t think that almost all aspects of a contract can be negotiated – depending on your leverage you might not be able to change the other party’s position but it’s always worth it to ask!

• Content and length were good.

• I enjoyed the course and found it very useful

• Great practical tips

• Appreciated tips for board presentation

​

Webinar

• We just had our yearly review with our bank and I applied several of the items from your course with great success. I was able to negotiate out of some personal guarantees and insurance requirements 

• I have really appreciate listening to the course 

• This (webinar) is a 10/10.  There is a lot of material which is useful on a day to day basis.  And the presenter is very professional and knowledgeable

• Interesting and kept us alert the majority of the time … much better than a regular presenter
  • I liked the section on negotiation with the bank and foreign exchange. Very pratical.
  • Great practical cases & experiences discussed.
  • Great course…….no comment to improve
  • Very interesting
  • Really appreciate the course
  • Many and very relevant and interesting subjects.
  • The pace of the presentation is perfect

​

In-class

• Working through cases with professionals from other industries and sectors is a great opportunity to learn from their experience. You just don’t get that in other seminars

• Made me think about better ways to do things

• This interactive course provided the opportunity to tap into a diverse knowledge base fostered by the brainstorming exercises

• I attend a lot of workshops and seminars and I have this "doodling scale" - the more I doodle the less I am learning - and I have to say I honestly did not doodle 

• Great back and forths between participants and lecturer

• I found the information very interesting - and the stories and jokes helped reinforce your points 

• Case work made the course more interactive and relevant

• Usually PD seminars are dull - this lecturer was a refreshing change and stimulates interest

• Enjoyed the case scenarios and practical examples

• Presenter was clear, knowledgeable and brought relevant examples

• Excellent: highly recommend as a two day package with Practical Tips for Controllers & CFOs

• Real life practical cases with practical solutions

• The financial reporting and banking offer case were most informative

• One of the best PD courses – practical, good mix of case study, group work and class discussion

• In my opinion, the case course is even more effective as students can learn better from interacting with their experienced peers

• It was relevant to my daily activities. I especially enjoyed the ethics discussions

• Real world discussion and examples

• Examples were practical, personal experience, could relate situations to your own work environment

• Practical applications

• Great instructor, relevant examples

• Entertaining, pace was good, detail relevant

• Very personable instructor, lots of good real examples

• Many real world info from instructor & other participants

• Very practical with real life examples. I could relate to our business very easily

• The case work was different than other PD courses I have taken, but it really facilitated great dialogue within the group and was a great way to pack a lot of information across a broad range of topics into one day

• Stephen is an excellent instructor for this course... broad experience / well organized / exemplary character!