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The Key Role Of Finance

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The key role of finance in any business is to manage money; whether it be raising capital through share capital and bank loans, raising credit (short-term capital), or handling the costs of the business. Without finance, a business would not function, as quoted by (Griffin, 2015); ‘Money is the lifeblood of a business and finance is the nerve center’.

Key activities of the finance department:
Firstly, one of the key activities of the finance department is to maintain a check on the costs/outgoings of the business. This is important because if the business spends too much, it may have to dip into its capital – money invested into the business to start it in the first place – or it may have to take out bank loans, in order to finance the …show more content…

This is very important because a business needs to know exactly where and when all of its money has been spent at any given time in order to be able to reduce the costs for the future. For example, for the year ending 2014 Arcadia Group generated £316.8 million revenue and finished up with £143.1 million pre-tax profit. (Limited, 2014) The decisions made by the accountants in the finance department leading up to and after the publication of these figures is essential to the financial success of the Arcadia Group (Topshop, Top man, Wallis, etc). Without constant reviews and ‘informed judgements and decisions’ (Weetman, 2006) by the accountants in finance, the Arcadia Group would start to make a loss and possibly, eventually go bankrupt. By evaluating the figures and reaching conclusions on them, the Arcadia Group will be better able to maximize the profits for the company.

Key tools and ideas that are critical to finance:
One of the key ideas behind the finance function is the question; ‘Is the business making a profit?’ This is because without making a profit, a business would not continue to exist. For example, in 2013 Ford made $8.6 billion in pre- tax profits, but in 2014 Ford made $6.3 billion, so there was a drop of $2.3 billion (Ford,

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