The Gravity of Finance

About a month into the programme, on the 25th of November 2016, our team was introduced to Michael Tang who previously worked as part of the Finance Team for Young Enterprise. After checking on the progress that our team had made and giving us some initial feedback, Mr Tang spoke to us regarding the obligation of going to at least one trade fair (including Brent Cross). We were then told of the opportunity of speaking to the Social Responsibility team at Asda in order to get a temporary table and/or stall at one of their stores.

A brief preview of the Finance Meeting was then talked through, with an emphasis on the importance and the role of the Finance Director and their team in our Company - they are responsible for the inflows and outflows of money, working through problems based on the time they will have to spend on the huge amounts of data that they must analyse and organise. They have the job of taking care of the share capital, keeping an eye on whoever we may owe money to as well as those who are indebted to us as a company.

Mr Tang went through the general outline of our financial year, explaining to us how VAT works and how we can use it to our advantage. Ideas and thoughts that may not have been discussed thoroughly - such as debt, shareholders, interim reports and much more - were explored during the thoughtful presentation that Mr Tang had prepared for us. He was also extremely helpful when it came to speaking to us about acquiring bank accounts from HSBC. One element of the programme that we hadn’t given too much thought about as a team was how it would end. Mr Tang gave us insightful information and described the concepts of dividends, share redemption, salaries to us.

This meeting was essential to our growth as a company as it allowed us to build up a clearer image of our goals and how we should achieve them. It can be said that without such a meeting, a company would struggle to professionally meet the financial standards that are expected during the Young Enterprise programme. We are extremely grateful to Mr Tang for taking the time to come to our school and organise the educative presentation that he gave us (complete with two booklets filled with information for our Finance Director as well as examples for her to follow).