Intensive workshop · Strategy
Questions an owner should be able to answer
Running a company on numbers does not require accounting; it requires knowing what to ask, who to ask, and how often.
- Duration
- 4 hours
- Delivery
- On site · Virtual
- Participants
- From 6 to 20 participants
- Investment
- Request a quote
Investment depends on scope, number of participants and delivery mode. We prepare a proposal at no obligation.
The problem it solves
There is a scene that repeats every month. The accountant explains, the owner nods, the meeting ends in twenty minutes and nobody leaves with a decision. There was no disagreement because there was no conversation: one person spoke a language the other never had a reason to learn.
What follows is not ignorance. It is quiet delegation. Someone who cannot phrase the question ends up accepting whichever answer arrives, and eventually stops asking rather than look uninformed in their own office. The large decisions still get made — hiring, buying equipment, borrowing, moving a price — but they get made on operating instinct and justified afterwards with whichever number is closest to hand.
The gap is not a missing accounting course. It closes when someone knows which questions a business answers with money and where each answer lives, which is precisely what nobody ever explained to the person who signs.
What it covers
The workshop does not teach accounting. It starts from the other end, with the questions an owner is entitled to answer about their own company — whether it makes money, whether it can pay what it owes, where the cash is trapped, which part of the business is carrying the rest, how long it holds out before it needs financing — and works backwards to the figure that settles each one.
Vocabulary appears only where it is needed. Margin, liquidity, fixed cost, working capital and cash flow arrive as instruments for asking a question precisely, not as definitions to memorise. Each term is anchored in a situation the participants recognise from their own operation, and anything nobody in the room can use is dropped.
The second half is about the conversation that comes afterwards: what to ask your accountant for, how often, in what format, and which answers mean something needs a closer look. Nobody reads statements line by line here; that is separate work. Everyone leaves with the questions written down rather than with notes.
What participants learn
- Ask the financial questions that belong to the owner rather than to the accountant.
- Use the terms that run through every conversation about money, and use them precisely.
- Identify which source answers each question, and how often it should be reaching you.
- Tell a question that a figure can settle from one that requires a decision.
- Hold a monthly numbers meeting without depending on someone to translate it.
Agenda
- The questions a business answers with money, and the ones it does not
- Profit, cash and equity: three different things spoken of as one
- Fixed and variable costs, seen through the decisions they constrain
- Margin: what is left after what
- Liquidity and solvency: paying this week versus staying in business
- Where each answer comes from: the records, the bank, the operation
- What to ask your accountant for, in what format and how often
- The signals that mean you should look closer before deciding
What the organisation leaves with
- A written list of the questions you will answer about your company every month.
- Your own glossary, with each term translated into the operation you run.
- An agenda for a monthly numbers meeting, with fixed items and an owner for each.
- A written request to whoever keeps your records, with format and dates.
Programme details
- Format
- Intensive workshop
- Also available as
- Workshop · Corporate training day
- Languages
- Español · English
- Includes
- Participant workbook
- Action plan
- Post-training resources
- Facilitation
- ALUD Consulting LLC — Global Business Transformation.
Who it is for
- Owners and partners who never had formal financial training
- Directors and area managers accountable for a budget they did not build
- Technical professionals who arrived at running a company from the operation
- Family members or partners who take part in decisions without touching the records
Frequently asked questions
- Do I need to know accounting to attend?
- No, and the workshop is wasted on you if you already do. It is built for people who run a company without financial training. If you have been reading your own statements for years, this is not your entry point.
- Will I leave able to read my financial statements?
- No. You will leave knowing what to ask them and which of them answers what. Reading a balance sheet and an income statement line by line is different work, and it goes better once the questions are clear.
- Will ALUD certify or validate the numbers we work on?
- No. ALUD does not audit and does not vouch for figures: financial statements are prepared and stood behind by a licensed accountant. What gets built in the room is the judgement of the person who has to read them and decide.
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Read more →Request this programme
Tell us the context and we will prepare a proposal tailored to your organisation. No obligation.
Working this inside the organisation
If this challenge will not be settled in one session, ALUD Consulting LLC works it as consulting: management consulting, human resources, strategy, organisational design, leadership development and business transformation.