ABSTRACT
However good the quality of its products or services, no organization can be successful for any length of time unless its finances are soundly managed. As well as requiring specialist staff possessed of the necessary skills, sound finan cial management also demands that the whole management of the organiza tion appreciates its importance and understands the ideas on which it is based. The purpose of this chapter is to present those ideas and explain their importance. Inevitably, in the interests of clarity, the material is much simplified and many im portant provisos and special cases have been ignored or only briefly alluded to; it should not therefore be taken as a complete statement of either law or current practice. In particular, we have largely omitted questions of taxation which, in practice, have a sub stantial effect on most aspects of a company’s financial affairs.
