Financial Education
Skopos is on a mission to engage more business owners in the world of finance and accounting, and to show them how the power of numbers can transform how they do business.
Numbers Lab
Numbers Lab is a series of hands-on, high-impact classes that cover the A to Z basics that business owners must know about finance & accounting to be successful.
Three years...
we’ve partnered with local business development organizations in New York City to take 365+ business owners and key managers through our Numbers Lab classes. We’d love to partner with you too!
Bring The Numbers Lab to your small business audience.
Schedule a call to explore how wecan train business owners in your communities.
More Than Just Numbers.
Numbers Lab is more than just learning about accounting terminology and financial reports.
It’s about equipping today’s modern business owners with numbers-driven skills and practical tools to better compete and make smarter decisions that maximize their potential. We break down mental barriers and expose growth-minded business owners to the world of finance and accounting so they can be more hands-on with their books and more in control of their business!
One of the single most important factors contributing to overall business growth is having advice the moment it is needed.
Our Office Hours give owners opportunities to work through questions around their financial reports, a business decision, Quickbooks best practices, or what metrics they should monitor for their success.
A highlight of our classes is that participants “learn by doing.” We provide participants with thoughtful tools, templates and other resources to enhance their learning experience:
Case Studies – We present business challenges inspired by actual clients to give participants an opportunity to apply what they’ve learned and practice problem solving.
Group Exercises & Dialogue – Group exercises and discussions open the doors to different perspectives and answers depending on each business’s unique model and situation.
Articles & Video – We provide useful, relevant and engaging articles on relevant topics for participants to get introduced to a topic.
Whiteboard Sessions – The best way to learn is by teaching others. When appropriate, we ask participants to lead an exercise with the facilitator’s support to demonstrate how they’ve put their learning into real business practice.
SBIDC Plan for Growth Program
Here are some of the updates we received as a result of the class:
Below is a sample of some of our courses.
CLASS SERIES
Intensive programs that span 15+ hours of
deep training in financial topics
ONE-OFF CLASS TOPICS
These stand-alone classes (2-3 hours each)
are a great way to introduce financial literacy
training. They don’t have any pre-requisites
and can be creatively packaged with our
office hours or an open Q&A session.
Small Business Finance Essentials (SBFE)
Small Business Finance Essentials includes 15 hours of instruction that cover the A to Z of what business owners need to know about finance & accounting. Facilitators blend lecture and hands-on learning to highlight important financial lingo, best practices to structure the Chart of Accounts, how to read and analyze financial statements for trends and what metrics are key to measure.
Designing Your Chart of Accounts (COA)
The Chart of Accounts is the blueprint layout for the two most important financial reports: the Income Statement and the Balance Sheet. In this 5-part class, we take a deep dive into each participants’ Chart of Accounts and how it ideally reflects their business model. The process of redesigning the Chart of Account – which is both art and science – is the single most effective exercise to get business owners closer to their numbers.
Quickbooks Online Reality Check
Quickbooks is undoubtedly the go-to choice to manage your business finances. And while Quickbooks has certainly democratized bookkeeping, the software is often not as intuitive or as simple as it’s marketed to be. Things like misapplied payments, unreconciled accounts, inventory items and growing undeposited funds snowball over time and blur your business’s real financial story.
* This class applies the theories and concepts learned in Small Business Finance Essentials into practice with Quickbooks Online.
ONE-OFF CLASS TOPICS
These stand-alone classes (2-3 hours each)
are a great way to introduce financial literacy
training. They don’t have any pre-requisites
and can be creatively packaged with our
office hours or an open Q&A session.
Everything You Want to Know About Bookkeeping
If you have a bookkeeper or are thinking about hiring one, you might be wondering how to know whether they are doing a good job, or how to best oversee the relationship. Or, if you are doing your own bookkeeping, how do you best manage yourself as the keeper of your books? It’s hard to know these things when you have little bookkeeping background and are wearing many hats. This 2 hour class provides an overview and objectively answers those burning questions business owners have.
Putting the Break-Evan Analysis to Work
What must my business revenues be in order to cover all my costs? How will hiring a new employee affect my break even? If I want to participate in a trade show for $20,000, how much in sales must my company make to cover it? What sales target do I need to reach if I want my owner’s compensation to be $1,000,000?
This class shows how the break-even analysis is a power tool to evaluate these kinds of goal-setting and profitability questions.
Intro to Financial Statements
Understanding your business financials is like eating vegetables as a kid — you don’t like it, but you know it’s good for you! Given proper consideration, your financial reports provide useful business intelligence that highlights your business’s health, profitability and unique story. Having a good grasp of how and where to find financial insights will help you implement more of what matters to your business, track your progress, measure profitability and tell your unique story.
