SMEs upgrade skills in financial management
Mr Ato Van-Ess, a trainer with the Business Sector Advocacy Challenge (BUSAC) Fund, has appealed to managers and owners of small-scale enterprises (SME) to be conversant with the use of the computer to enhance their records keeping and business management capacity.
He said it was important for all business enterprises to be able to use the computer for the collection and documentation of their financial data instead of doing it manually.
Mr Van-Ess said this at the end of a five-day Financial Management training workshop for 24 managers of small scale businesses drawn from the Central and Western regions held in Cape Coast.
The participant represented the Anomabu Fishmongers Association, coalition of central and western regions poultry farmers association, Citrus Growers and Marketing Association of Ghana, Eastern Gomoa Export Vegetable Farmers, Ekumfi Sraha Pineapple Growers Association, God Dey Tomato Sellers Association, Mankessim No1 GPRTU, and the Winneba Traditional Caterers Association.
They were taken through financial management, cost categories, bookkeeping, cash planning and forecasting and the preparation of balance sheet.
Mr Van-Ess said BUSAC FUND was combining advocacy work with financial management training because a study conducted revealed that most managers and owners of small-scale enterprises knew very little about record keeping and effective financial management.
He spoke about the importance of record keeping seriously and said some businesses were not functioning well because they did not keep proper documents and data on the operations of their businesses stressing and added that no bank or financial institution would transact business with a disorganized institution.
Mr Van-Ess said many of them could not manage their cash flow, adding that business managers were quick to rush for bank loans without putting in place measures for the effective investment of the money thereby mismanaging the funds received.
Some of the participants the GNA spoke to expressed their gratitude to BUSAC FUND for the training and suggested that there should be follow-up workshops alongside monitoring participant to ensure that they put what they had learnt into practice.
Source: GNA