This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.

One thing to be clear about before you buy: pricing in this course means the price of work, not the price of a product. If you came for how to price what you sell, this is the wrong course.

Small businesses do not lose money on bookkeeping. They lose it on commitments

The usual finance course for a small business is bookkeeping for beginners — here is the profit and loss statement, here is the balance sheet, here is cash flow. Useful, and not where the money goes. It goes on decisions made once and then in force for years: what to pay the second person when the first one asks for a rise, whether the bonus goes to everybody or to results, whether to add insurance because a competitor did. Each of those looks like a personnel decision and is in fact a multi-year financial commitment. In a company of ten people, the payroll is the budget — and profitability is decided there rather than in the accounts.

What this course covers

Thirty-nine lessons. The model first: what an efficiency-driven business means and which measures show it, turning a strategy into financial goals, how models change from start-up to corporation, mission embedded into planned figures, process chains and the black holes inside them, goals people believe in, the strategy pyramid, planning that produces decisions rather than documents, indicators across customers, people, processes and finance without killing motivation, Lean applied to financial processes, and scaling without rebuilding every time. Then the budget built from the bottom: what can be budgeted at all, strategy before numbers, market benchmarks, the return calculation behind a request, payroll and unfilled positions, bonuses, benefits and overheads, development spending that survives a mid-year cut, and the costs nobody plans and everybody pays. Then the price of work: what companies actually pay for, the role of a salary range, analysing a job before pricing it, grading and pay structure with a ready tool, a bonus formula, the benefits system with a cafeteria plan, salary market reviews and how to use one, and recognition and referral bonuses. Then the pay system itself: compensation philosophy, grades and ranges, pay equity, the repertory grid and factorial methods, selecting grade width, linking grades to what the market pays, the pay policy, payroll budgeting, and the salary review matrix. Finally benefits and what they return: the WorldatWork model, the categories, three ways to justify the spend, flexible schemes, researching what people actually want, budgeting the package, and automation.

Four of the five blocks were recorded for a people function

The budgeting, compensation, grading and benefits blocks were made for HR specialists in larger organisations. For this course that is the point rather than a compromise: they take the largest cost line in a small business apart down to individual figures — ranges, grades, bonus formulas, benefit budgets, market reviews. An owner of a ten-person company needs exactly the same machinery as an HR department in a corporation, with the single difference that they will be doing the arithmetic themselves. One limitation worth stating: the examples assume a business with employees on a payroll. If you work mainly with contractors, half the machinery will be more than your situation requires. The business model block has no industry attached.

Who is teaching this

I am Mike. I built the people system at Preply as it became a unicorn, and I have worked at Wargaming, iDeals and Alfa-Bank. More than 1.6 million students have enrolled in my courses across 185 countries, and over 150,000 specialists have gone through my programmes. I hold PHRi and SHRM-CP certifications and represent HRCI in more than ten countries.

What is included

• Lifetime access to all 39 lessons

• Active instructor support in the Q&A section

• A Udemy Certificate of Completion

• Working material: the budget build-up with benchmarks, the return calculation, a ready grading tool, the bonus formula, salary range construction, the salary review matrix, the benefits budgeting and analysis file, and the cafeteria plan design

• The largest cost line taken apart to individual figures, rather than described

Where to start

Take the last salary you set and write down how you arrived at the number. If the answer is "it felt right" or "that is what they asked for", you have found the reason this course exists. Enrol now and start today.