Accuracy Workshop

November 14, 2019

Accuracy is a mid-sized consultancy firm that operates in over 14 countries and offers data-based strategic advice. The Accuracy Team partnered with Bridges for Enterprise to deliver a whistle-stop tour of accounting, finance, and financial modelling for students at the University of Cambridge.

Antoine Massot kicked off the evening with an introduction to accounting. He started with double-entry bookkeeping and a (relatively) fun fact – the oldest double-entry system dates back to Genoa in 1340. The premise of double-entry is that each financial transaction will impact both the credit and the debit account. Take out £1000, for example, and you get £1000 in cash (debit), but now owe the bank £1000 (credit). Think you’ve got it? Try out the example below:

A company buys a car for £5000 and pays £1500 upfront. What are the values of a, b, and c?

He took us through financial statements, balance sheets and working capital before handing over to Andrés Rothschild. Andrés moved from accounting to valuation and asked us the very Cambridge-interview-esque question: ‘what is value?’. Value, for those as uninformed as me, is essentially how much you would pay for something, and is influenced by risk, opinions, and time. He ran through income, market, and cost approaches to valuation before Ioana Tanase gave us some tips and tricks for financial modelling. She told us to understand the business before modelling, then benchmark and test the sensitivity of the outputs. The model should contain assumptions, outputs, calculations, and separators. Finally, the model should have different colours, incorporate different scenarios, and delete external sources.