FINANCE notes

This section is about reading and using financial documents, and about tariff systems (electricity, water, municipal, telephone, transport). In an exam you are given a real-looking bill, slip…

This section is about income, expenditure, profit and loss, and about two documents that list them: an income-and-expenditure statement and a budget. In an exam you are given line items (or you must…

This section is about cost price, selling price, mark-up, and the income a small business earns from sales. You add the component costs of one item, set a selling price, find the percentage mark-up…

This section is about break-even analysis: finding where income equals expenses, or where two options cost the same. You read that point from a table of income and expenditure, or from the…

This section is about interest, bank loans and investments. You must define interest and the interest rate, spot the rate on a statement, run simple and compound calculations by hand, complete a…

This section is about inflation: define it, increase a price by a percentage for one year, then run compound growth (and compound decline) year by year. Over several years you show how an item's…

This section is about taxation: reading a payslip, working VAT, UIF and personal income tax (PAYE), using the paper's income-tax table, and explaining how tax changes from one period (or one salary)…

This section is about exchange rates: reading a table or rate board, converting a quantity of rands into foreign currency (and back), adding bank fees, and explaining the Big Mac Index, including…