Duration
2 weeksWeekly study
5 hours
Break-Even Analysis Unlocked: How to Understand the Profit and Loss Statement
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How do you know when a business will become profitable? And can you predict business risk and potential losses? Every successful company runs different financial analyses before making investment decisions. Break-even analysis helps these companies to ensure their survival in the short term.
On this course, you’ll have the opportunity to cover everything that a comprehensive break-even analysis entails. You’ll have the chance to learn how to understand the different classifications of cost and how they relate to business stability.
You’ll also find out how to evaluate the feasibility of business ideas and their potential for success by calculating and applying the break-even point, or BEP.
Learn how to read a profit and loss statement
Want to know how to analyse a profit and loss (P&L)? This course will teach you what you need to know about the P&L statement – from sources of income and sales and seasonality to the all-important bottom line: net profitability.
Find out how to calculate margin of safety
What is the margin of safety? Simply put, it’s the amount that sales can fall before the break-even point is reached and the business makes no profit. This calculation also tells a business how many sales it has made over its BEP.
This course explores the principles of margin of safety and profit, and look at the output for required profit.
You’ll also carry out exercises on break-even analysis using formulas and templates, and be introduced to operational gearing (or operational leverage) – the relationship between a firm’s fixed and variable costs.
Syllabus
Week 1
Cost, profit and breaking even
Getting started
Welcome to Break-Even Analysis. Get an introduction to the topics from our course leader and find out what we'll cover this week.
Introducing cost
Let's begin our learning journey by introducing the different types of cost and exploring how they influence decision-making in business.
Exploring the concept of break-even
In this section we look at what break-even means and how it is calculated. You also get to test your skills in calculating break-even point with a practical example.
Summary and reflection
Let's take a moment to look back at this week and find out what will be coming up next week.
Week 2
Operational gearing
Welcome to Week 2
Welcome to the second week of Break-Even Analysis. We'll now introduce margin of safety, as well as the concept and effect of operational gearing.
Margin of safety and profit
How do companies work out how much money they need to make before they become unprofitable? We explore the concept of margin of safety in the next few steps.
Introducing operational gearing
In this activity, we introduce operational gearing, evaluate different cost structures and explain the limitations of marginal costing.
Summary and reflection
As we bring this short course to a close, you now have an opportunity to consider the various topics of break-even analysis we have covered and look ahead to what's next.
Learning on this course
On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.
What will you achieve?
By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...
- Calculate and apply break-even point, margin of safety and profit
- Describe contribution and explain its importance
- Evaluate the effect of operational gearing on risk and profit
- Explain the difference between fixed, variable and semi variable costs
- Explore the concept of operational gearing and explain its importance
Who is the course for?
This course is designed for anyone looking to build their financial data analysis and interested in using data for business decision making.
It will be of particular interest to people in senior management and leadership roles who lack an accounting background, especially if you wish to learn the skills to help you make better decisions and advance your career.
You can enhance your learning experience by following related courses, designed by Coventry University:
- Financial Statements Unlocked: How to Understand Corporate Finance and Financial Management
- How to Master Financial Statements: Financial Ratio Analysis and Interpretation
- How to Make Better Capital Investment Decisions and Recognise Investment Opportunities
- Divisional Performance Measurement: How to Achieve Operational Excellence
Learning on FutureLearn
Your learning, your rules
- Courses are split into weeks, activities, and steps to help you keep track of your learning
- Learn through a mix of bite-sized videos, long- and short-form articles, audio, and practical activities
- Stay motivated by using the Progress page to keep track of your step completion and assessment scores
Join a global classroom
- Experience the power of social learning, and get inspired by an international network of learners
- Share ideas with your peers and course educators on every step of the course
- Join the conversation by reading, @ing, liking, bookmarking, and replying to comments from others
Map your progress
- As you work through the course, use notifications and the Progress page to guide your learning
- Whenever you’re ready, mark each step as complete, you’re in control
- Complete 90% of course steps and all of the assessments to earn your certificate
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