Finance Fundamentals for Building and Construction Businesses

About this course.

This course gives the owners, managers and administrators of Australian building and construction businesses a working grasp of the money side of the business — the part that most often decides whether a technically good firm survives. It assumes you are skilled at what you do and comfortable running jobs, but that no one ever sat you down and explained the finances in language that made sense. It starts with the single most important financial idea for a construction business: the difference between cash flow and profit, and why strong-looking businesses fail when the cash runs out. It then teaches you to read the three basic financial statements in plain English, so the reports your accounting software or accountant produces stop being a mystery.

From there it moves to the money skills specific to winning and running construction work: pricing and quoting jobs, understanding your costs, and the frequently misunderstood difference between margin and mark-up; and managing the timing of money on projects through progress claims, retentions, and the discipline of getting money in from debtors while managing what you owe creditors — including how to chase payment professionally without wrecking relationships. It covers budgeting and forecasting, and the essential habit of setting money aside for tax, GST and other obligations before it feels like yours to spend. It explains why good record-keeping and bookkeeping are the foundation everything else sits on, and where your general reporting obligations to the ATO fit. And it finishes with the practical question of when and how to work with a bookkeeper or an accountant, and what each one actually does.