In today's rapidly evolving financial landscape, understanding and effectively managing your financial resources is crucial for building a secure and profitable future. This will be a predominantly hands-on workshop that will challenge participants to collaboratively build an operational and financial plan for a fictitious company with a made-up budget. The aim will be to teach attendees the skills required to use elements of CEDIA’s business toolkit.

This immersive, hands-on workshop goes beyond theory, providing participants with actionable insights and tools to make informed financial decisions. 

Areas of focus: 

• The Chart of Accounts – Specific to CEDIA Members 
• Understanding Labor Costs and Tracking Employee Productivity 
• Pricing Using Markup and Margin 
• Change Order Management 
• Creating a Breakeven Analysis 
• Creating a Financial Dashboard 

Target audience: 

• Owners/Executives of all size companies needing to hone their financial management skills 
• Self-employed individuals looking to start a business 
• Business owners with 1-10 employees looking for growth 

What to bring to this workshop:

• Your laptop computer that can run Excel 
• Your Financial Statements (you will not be required to share with other participants unless you agree) 
  • Profit and Loss for the current year and/or for last year 
  • Balance sheet 
• Your willingness to learn and ask questions 

Workshop Highlights: 

• Financial Foundations: Begin with a comprehensive overview of the key economic concepts and terminology that form the building blocks of a strong financial foundation. We will be using CEDIA’s free business toolkit for our hands-on work. 
• Data-Driven Decision Making: Explore how to gather and analyse your financial data effectively. Discover the power of data-driven decision-making and how to use financial statements to gain insights into your financial health. Understand the role of ratios and metrics in assessing your financial performance. 
• Goal Setting and Strategy: Learn how to set realistic financial goals and create a strategic roadmap to achieve them. Understand the importance of aligning your short-term actions with your long-term objectives. Develop strategies to optimize your financial resources and make informed investment choices. 
• Interactive Case Studies: Engage in interactive case studies and group activities that simulate real-life financial scenarios. Apply the concepts learned throughout the workshop to solve financial challenges, fostering a deeper understanding of practical application. 

Using engineering calculations, the course teaches the use of world-recognised standards and recommended practices. Starting with assessing client needs and progressing on to real-world design, students will cover the engineering principles involved in high-performance design.

Included in the learning provided by this course is the science and calculations required to create a complete design. Attendees will study the theory of cinema in detail, and undertake a design exercise for both audio, video, and other associated factors including data, heat, and lighting.

During the afternoon of the course, students will take part in an interactive workshop to design a cinema from a real client brief including a peer-reviewed design assessment.