Happy Reviews

Too early to comment on the effectiveness of the program

This finance session was better as we got more stuck in to the detail. Some of it was still a bit slow for me

I missed the first finance workshop so I can't compare the two, but I felt the first half was a bit too granular (eg, the finance coding), but loved going through the balance sheets (financial reporting and management accounts). I know Amsel tried to avoid it, but I would have like him to talk through the financial accounts line by line and highlight the areas that we should focus on. Just a general comment, and I do understand that the bulk of people on the course, and indeed all Happy courses, come from the not-for-profit sector, but I feel there's a lack of focus on the commercial sector and the challenges that we have.

A challenging session today with lots of new information. As always though, thought provoking and informative and a great group of supportive peers

Henry's metrics section and the Beyond Budgeting exercise were good. The other bits were a bit slow. I felt they were explained in too much detail and the explanations were often repeated using different words.

It was good initiative to get everyone on same page and put our thoughts at same page as the CEO and interns too.

Finance training day was great and leader had a good pace was interesting and very clear.

Unfortunately there were some technical issues which delayed the start time but this kind of thing happens. It was evident that the attendees were confused about all the different ways that they have been able to save items over the last 3 years so there were lots of questions asked to try and make sense of the training that was being provided today. I think that whatever was in this training module will need revising unless some sort of pre -training release guidance document/flowchart can be distributed and read before hand to try and raise all staff awareness of the different software we have been using and what needs to be saved where and also what needs transferring and deleting.

Instructor Sal was very good (and patient). Course content was predetermined and not needs based so a lot of it initially appeared complex and irrelevant. Parts for me did not appear to be aimed at total excel novices. Suggest in future for one to one sessions more time is spent beforehand (and pre session) determining student needs. Only in the last hour when it was apparent I did not understand what was being taught and we discussed what I actually wanted to know did the course become more alive. That said some of the tools learnt in the morning were relevant to what i wanted to know.

The course was comprehensive, but I already knew about most of the techniques and tools that were described. 3.5 hour is also a little bit long to concentrate on emails!