Figuring Out Finance - The Financial Driver’s License
Saturday 1st May All Day
This event will aim to provide an ‘associative’ grounding in financial orientation with a practical focus on enterprise and project financing. Reference will be made to the insights of Rudolf Steiner’s economic thinking in the context of today’s language.
Where relevant, participants will be asked to bring real life examples from their own circumstances (whether actual or prospective): project descriptions, financial plans, accounting information etc; all of which will be treated with confidentiality and discretion. The idea is to encourage participants to chart their own financial biographies and through the nuts and bolts of an accounting approach to gain a deeper perspective than is ordinarily possible.
Morning 1
A Journey into the Future of Finance – Charting the Landscape
When one sets out on a journey one first researches the terrain. We inhabit an invisible financial environment, alongside the physical one, just as real but operating by other laws. In this landscape too, we are on a journey with an origin and destination.
Star to steer by …
In this session we will review how before getting lost in the details one needs to know what one is trying to achieve; for example by naming one’s star. When one orientates oneself in this way, the journey ahead can be made visible.
Morning 2
Choosing a Vehicle – The Nature of Incorporation
Being economically active requires that one act in some other capacity than that of our personal self. This is reflected in the fact that even the simplest business activity is, in tax terms, distinct from a personal one, for example made distinct with a ‘Doing Business As’ appellation. This other entity is the vehicle for our economic activity.
How does the vehicle one chooses to drive (or the entity one chooses to incorporate) effect how one travels? If one wanted to navigate a river, one wouldn’t choose a car. The world today, however, is full of ‘special-offer’ cars ready to drive on roads leading nowhere! Thought will be given to what forms help rather than hinder us.
Afternoon 1
Mechanics and Maintenance – The Sound of the Engine
Its one thing to own a vehicle, another to know how to drive it. The effective use of accounting is the foundation of management – not in order to ‘manage by numbers’ but in order that the business can speak through the numbers. The mechanics of bookkeeping are an essential practitioner’s tool for keeping an activity running smoothly.
In this session we will get to grips with double-entry and look at an associative accounting template that allows us to perceive the business.
Afternoon 2
Fuel Economy – On the Road
An enterprise runs on cash flow – yet all too often new projects find themselves undercapitalised, even having to manage negative cash-flow. How might the world be different were we to have the right kind of fuel to get to where we need to go!
In this session we will do some hands on financial planning using examples brought by participants.