Audience
- Managers presenting business cases, owning budgets or negotiating resources.
- Project and operations leaders evaluating costs and organisational investments.
- Professionals preparing for broader commercial responsibility.
Programme module · Kent Business College
Strategic Financial Management
Level 7 module 4: connect financial performance, investment appraisal, funding and strategic decisions across 14 weekly online sessions.
Learning with a practical purpose.
A board must choose between expanding its delivery team and investing in a new service platform. Both proposals sound persuasive, but they compete for the same cash and management attention. In this module, you become the manager responsible for explaining the financial consequences. You build a recommendation that colleagues can inspect, question and improve.
Study through Kent Business College UK in 14 weekly two-hour online sessions, supported by preparation, exercises and assignment development. The outline is an indicative teaching plan for the requested online route. It connects with Strategic Financial Management, an optional OTHM unit selected within KBC’s Level 7 pathway; the issued assignment brief determines the assessed tasks.
Live onlineTeaching through Kent Business College, UK
2 hoursOne live session each teaching week
14 sessionsA semester for each module
28 live hoursPer module, plus independent study
The outline below is a 14-session online module, with one two-hour live session each teaching week. Reading weeks, breaks and additional activities follow the agreed cohort calendar. The cohort syllabus, full route, dates, fees, independent study and assessment requirements are confirmed before enrolment.
Who this module is designed for.
Starting knowledge and preparation
- Be comfortable with percentages and basic spreadsheet formulas; worked examples support further numerical development.
- Bring experience of organisational decisions and a willingness to explain how you reached a conclusion.
- Admission to the regulated diploma is assessed separately. Discuss your qualifications, management experience and English-language readiness with KBC.
What you will work towards.
- Explain a business’s financial condition using connected evidence and appropriate comparisons.
- Choose a costing approach and defend a pricing or capacity recommendation.
- Construct a coherent budget and investigate the management decisions behind variances.
- Evaluate funding choices against the timing of a company’s cash needs.
- Appraise competing organisational projects and defend a recommendation under changed assumptions.
Explore the 14-session learning plan.
Explore the focus and practical output of each teaching session. Open individual sessions below, or expand the complete plan.
Session 01 The decision and its financial questions
Meet the fictional Meridian leadership team and examine two rival growth proposals. Identify the decision, who can authorise it and which missing figures could change the answer.
Practical output: A decision brief and financial information request.
Session 02 Reading the business through its statements
Trace a service contract through income, assets, liabilities and cash. Explain why the same transaction appears differently across reports and why reported profit may not fund the next payment.
Practical output: An annotated financial-statement walkthrough.
Session 03 Performance comparisons that survive scrutiny
Calculate a small set of profitability, liquidity and efficiency measures. Investigate a misleading year-on-year comparison and identify the contextual explanation a manager should seek before acting.
Practical output: A performance commentary with comparison limits.
Session 04 Costs that change the decision
Separate costs that move with volume from committed expenditure and opportunity costs. Challenge a proposal to close a service line using only its allocated overhead.
Practical output: A relevant-cost worksheet and capacity recommendation.
Session 05 Costing and pricing the service
Compare absorption, marginal and activity-based views of Meridian’s delivery work. Explore which activities cause cost and how a different allocation could alter a pricing discussion.
Practical output: A costing comparison and justified improvement.
Session 06 Building an integrated budget
Connect sales assumptions, staffing, delivery capacity and cash in a compact master budget. Identify a disagreement between departmental plans and reconcile it before the figures reach the board.
Practical output: A linked budget with an assumptions register.
Session 07 Investigating variance and behaviour
Review an apparent favourable spending variance alongside missed service commitments. Separate volume effects from controllable performance and consider how targets influence reporting and behaviour.
Practical output: A variance explanation and corrective-action proposal.
Session 08 Cash through the operating cycle
Model the gap between paying employees and receiving customer payments. Test delayed receipts and staged customer billing, explaining the operational consequences of each response.
Practical output: A short-term cash forecast and working-capital note.
Session 09 Choosing a funding approach
Compare illustrative internal funding, borrowing and equity options for the case company. Examine timing, repayment commitments, flexibility and control before proposing a fit with the planned investment.
Practical output: A funding options matrix and recommendation.
Session 10 Preparing project cash flows
Convert the competing proposals into cash-flow schedules. Identify incremental expenditure, timing, residual assumptions and double counting; distinguish the appraisal model from an accounting profit forecast.
Practical output: Two traceable project cash-flow schedules.
Session 11 Testing investment attractiveness
Apply payback, accounting return, net present value and internal rate of return to supplied case data. Investigate why measures may favour different projects and explain the decision implications.
Practical output: An appraisal comparison with calculation checks.
Session 12 Sensitivity and difficult scenarios
Change adoption speed, delivery costs and payment timing. Separate a calculation error from a weak forecast and identify the assumptions that deserve investigation before approval.
Practical output: A scenario comparison and evidence priorities.
Session 13 The investment committee conversation
Present an affordable recommendation that considers delivery capability as well as modelled returns. Respond to a challenge from a fictional finance director and revise the conditions attached to approval.
Practical output: An investment paper and response to challenge.
Session 14 Review, reflect and prepare the submission
Reconcile calculations, commentary and sources across the case. Explain a changed judgement, identify any missing assessment evidence and plan how the investment would be reviewed after implementation.
Practical output: A revised evidence pack and submission plan.
Apply the learning
Meridian’s next investment
Meridian Business Services is an original fictional teaching company considering a regional team and a digital delivery platform. Using supplied assumptions, recommend how it should allocate limited resources while sustaining existing customer commitments. Your answer may favour a staged approach, further investigation or deferral. The quality of the reasoning matters more than choosing the most ambitious proposal.
Your project evidence can include
- A financial diagnosis and costing improvement proposal.
- A linked budget, cash forecast and funding comparison.
- Competing investment appraisals with scenario analysis.
- A concise board recommendation with approval conditions and review measures.
Use anonymised, public or suitable synthetic material where workplace information is confidential. The issued assessment brief confirms the required evidence.
Assessment, feedback and certification.
- Practise through short numerical tasks, peer review and explanations of your decisions. Keep corrections visible so that feedback improves the final argument.
- Use the workshop case to develop an individual submission with referenced evidence and inspectable calculations. The final organisation, scope, format and length follow your issued assessment brief.
- The OTHM route uses coursework with pass/fail judgement. The centre assesses achievement and OTHM externally verifies it; all required criteria must be satisfied.
- Treat forecasts and simulated outcomes as assumptions. Any workplace claim must identify its source and your own contribution.
KBC course completion and OTHM qualification achievement are distinct. Your enrolment offer confirms registration, assessment and certification arrangements. Attendance alone does not establish an OTHM unit pass.
Live classes within a larger learning commitment
The 28 live hours are the scheduled online classes. OTHM identifies this 20-credit unit as 100 guided learning hours and 200 total qualification hours. KBC’s learning agreement explains the remaining supervised activity, preparation, practice and assessment. Plan regular time between classes to rebuild calculations and write your interpretation.
- Before class: read the case update and identify one decision you cannot yet justify.
- During class: show a calculation, question an assumption and explain the effect in plain language.
- After class: revise the working model and record why the recommendation changed.
Make the recommendation inspectable
Build the spreadsheet as a working record that another learner can follow. Label the units and dates, separate inputs from calculations and make the source of each important assumption visible. A reviewer should be able to change one input without searching through unrelated cells.
The board paper should stand on its own. State the choice, the reasons, the cash implications and the conditions that would change your view. Use the model to support that explanation, and retain a short list of matters requiring specialist finance input before a real organisation commits.
A useful challenge
If customer receipts arrive later than expected, does the preferred project remain affordable? Explain the difference between a project appearing attractive over its life and the organisation being able to finance the intervening period.
Questions worth asking.
Must I have an accounting qualification?
The learning design supports managers from different functions. You need willingness to practise numerical work and explain it. KBC will discuss whether your starting knowledge and experience are suitable for the chosen route.
Is this about personal investments?
The exercises examine company budgets, funding and organisational projects. They develop management capability through fictional cases and do not recommend personal investments or predict returns.
Can I use my employer’s figures?
An authorised and anonymised workplace case may be agreed with your tutor. The supplied fictional company lets you practise without disclosing confidential commercial information.
Does completing this module award the diploma?
It is one selected unit within the complete pathway. The OTHM diploma requires the full qualifying unit combination and successful assessment; KBC confirms how your enrolment contributes.
Programme references.
Further reading and programme references · reviewed 18 October 2026