v. 1. What are budgets? How do they work? In Blakeway Ltd budgeting is vital to their manufacturing plans - but budgets depend on sales forecasts which are notoriously unreliable. Variance analysis is used to track the difference between estimates and reality. Budgets can be used to make staff more accountable and set priorities - but sometimes managers use up current budgets simply for fear of losing their money next year! --v. 2. A manager uses...

You can have a great product, great marketing ideas, but if you don't understand how finance works, you're in trouble. This is an entertaining guide to sources of finance for business start-ups. CASE STUDIES: Using real-life businesses, the film illustrates the pros and cons of different sources of finance. Loans are repayable, with interest, regardless of the company's ability to pay. Share capital is more flexible, but it means losing some control....

How does the established business get finance? Dave Nellist makes the points, illustrated by real-life case studies. SALES REVENUE is, of course, the best finance a business can have, because it's self generated. "Retained profits" can be ploughed back into the business without any of the "strings" attached to loans and shares. But even established businesses have cash flow problems. We look at the role of OVERDRAFTS in helping them through. How does...

The film explains how two very different types of business manage their finances - high-flying salad bar chain Tossed and SRA, a social enterprise dedicated to helping people with mental health problems to get back to work. SOURCES OF FINANCE: Before you can do anything you need money. Tossed founder Vincent McKevitt deliberately avoided selling equity in his business, relying instead on loans from wherever he could get them. By contrast, as a social...

v. 1. How does a business choose between different sources of finance? Is it always better to get money from inside the company than get an overdraft or loan or to sell shares in the firm? And what are the pros and cons of selling assets to raise finance? --v. 2. Divine Chocolate found its funding in a novel way - by giving an ownership stake to the cocoa farmers which supply its beans. This source of finance fits well with the fair trade company's...

The small town of Pacashau, Georgia, has fallen on hard times, but the people are counting on the church choir to lift their spirits by winning the national Joyful Noise Competition. But the discord between its two leading ladies threatens to tear everything apart.

Pink ribbons...they're everywhere: tee-shirts, hats, yogurt cups, KFC buckets, car ads, NFL stadiums...the list goes on and on. They make us feel good, as if we're all engaged in a successful battle against breast cancer. But who is really benefiting? After all, more and more women are diagnosed with breast cancer every year. Maybe it's the companies who wrap their products in pink to gain our admiration (and money)... and wouldn't it be something...

American public education is in controversy. As public schools across the country struggle for funding, complicated by the impact of poverty and politics, some question the future and effectiveness of public schools in the U.S. For free-market reformers, private investors and large education corporations, this controversy spells opportunity in turning public schools over to private interests. Education, Inc. examines the free-market and for-profit...

Gordon Smith, head of the Collum Collum Aboriginal Co-operative which operates a cattle station in northern New South Wales, and Sunny Bancroft, the station manager, are negotiating with the Aboriginal Development Corporation in Canberra for a loan. Finance is needed to stock the property with breeding cattle so that the station can become financially independent. The film details the frustrations of negotiating with a distant bureaucracy while,...