Budgeting: Planning, Forecasting, What-if Analysis & Reporting

A good plan should begin with a good forecast, which in turn, may lead to a good budget. A strategy is a long-term plan of what the company is going to do to achieve its policy. The budget is the short-term plan of how strategies may be achieved. It is a quantification of the activities the company must develop to achieve its short-term plans. This leading-edge course explains:

• The planning and budgeting process from beginning to end
• Budget development
• How alternative decisions affect the ‘bottom line’ in terms of both profit and cash flow
• Comparison of variances in actual performance against the plan and what these budget variances are saying and how they should be used to control financial performance
• The use of Excel as the toolbox of choice for financial model development, used within this course to develop forecasts, and long- and short-term plans.

The objectives of the seminar are to enable delegates to:

• Develop strategic thinking, and use the strategic management process to develop missions and objectives and carry out strategic analysis and decision-making
• Understand the relationship between financial planning, forecasting, and budgeting and integration of the strategic management process with the budgeting cycle
• Understand cost behavior, the use of alternative costing systems, and cost/volume/profit (CVP) analysis, and develop and prepare an operating budget and how it may be funded using the alternative sources of finance
• Use various Excel© models to forecast sales pricing, optimal product mix, long- and short-term sales levels, and build financial growth planning models and traditional and activity-based budget models, and improve budget accuracy
• Use the techniques of budgetary control: development of product standards, flexed budgets, and variance analysis and use of the results of variance analysis to improve operational performance
• Determine a company’s cost of capital and use the technique of discounted cash flow (DCF) for capital budgeting and evaluation of capital project investment, and risk analysis using the techniques of sensitivity, simulation, and scenario analysis.

Forecasting and budgeting are essential skills that should be acquired at the appropriate level by all the professionals in an organization, in particular:

• Financial professionals, finance controllers, treasurers, and inventory professionals
• Senior professionals with direct responsibility for financial management and control
• Accountants, sales and purchasing professionals and those responsible for the relationship with banks
• Any professional, at junior or senior level, who is a part of the financial decision- making a team
• New interns and trainees with finance-related responsibilities
• Department heads, process owners, administrative personnel associated with budget management, financial and technical professionals, sales and marketing professionals, project professionals, and anyone who needs to understand how to develop cost projections for their department, projects.