Training on Budgeting, Forecasting and the Planning Process

About the Course

Budgeting, planning, and forecasting is a three-step strategic planning process that identifies and details an organization's long- and short-term financial objectives. The finance department of an organization typically oversees the procedure. Planning outlines the company's financial direction and creates a model of expectations. Budgeting documents how the overall plan will be executed month to month and typically include estimates of revenue and expenses and expected cash flow and debt reduction while forecasting uses accumulated historical data and market conditions to predict financial outcomes for future months or years.

This training program equips participants with the knowledge and abilities needed to create top-notch strategic planning, forecasting, and budgeting procedures.

Target Participants

This course is ideal for a wide variety of professionals, particularly those with direct or indirect budgetary responsibility within a team, department, or division. The training program is also ideal for project managers and individuals who handle budgetary plans and are in charge of doing cost and strategic analyses.

Course Duration

Online

7 Days

Classroom-based  

5 Days

What You Will Learn

By the end of this course the participants will be able to:

• Enhance their strategic thinking skills and participation in the integration of the organization's strategic management and budgeting procedures.
• Utilize forecasting methods that are most suitable for the organization's strategic planning and budgeting
• Recognize how costs behave and pinpoint the costing techniques that can be utilized for financial planning, budgeting, and budgetary control.
• Utilize best practices when creating operating, capital, and cash flow budgets and forecasts per the strategic goals of the organization.

Course Outline

Strategic Management and Financing

• Strategic analysis, strategic choices and evaluation, and strategic implementation
• The Links between strategy, forecasting, planning, budgeting, performance measurement
• Strategic capability and avoiding the spiral of death
• Shareholder wealth maximization, corporate and shareholder value creation
• Financial strategy, dividend policy, the agency problem, and corporate governance
• Long-term financing
• Capital structure optimization models
• Using strategy maps to link strategies to performance measurement: the balanced scorecard

Financial Planning, Forecasting, and Risk Analysis

• The financial planning process and modeling using Excel
• Statistical forecasting tools and techniques
• Forecasting long- and short-term sales revenues, and sales pricing
• Using Excel for optimum product mix decisions
• Short-term financing, working capital, and the cash operating cycle
• Direct and indirect cash flow analysis and cash flow forecasting using Excel
• Uncertainty and risk
  • Business risk
  • Financial risk
  • Systematic risk
  • Unsystematic risk
• How to minimize and mitigate risk

Cost Analysis Techniques

• Cost behavior and activities
• Fixed and variable costs, direct and indirect costs
• Product costs and period costs
• Cost allocation and absorption of overheads
• Absorption or full costing
• Marginal costing
• Cost-volume-profit (CVP) and ‘what-if’ analysis using Excel
• Activity-based costing (ABC) and Activity-based management (ABM)

Budgeting, Budgetary Control, and Performance Improvement

• Purposes and reasons for budgets
• Stages in the budget preparation process
• Preparation of the master budget
• Activity-based budgeting
• Responsibility accounting and variance analysis
  • Standard costing; flexed budgets; budgetary control to measure organizational and management performance
• Advantages, disadvantages, and behavioral aspects of budgeting
• The conflict between performance improvement and the costing system
• Integrating continuous performance improvement into the budget process

Project Appraisal and Capital Budgeting

• The time value of money
• Future values
• Present values
• Discounted cash flow
• Capital investment project appraisal
  • Accounting rate of return (ARR); payback; Net present value (NPV); Internal rate of return (IRR); modified internal rate of return (MIRR); Discounted payback; Equivalent annual cost (EAC)
• Project risk
  • Sensitivity analysis; simulation; scenario analysis; NPV break-even
• Capital rationing
• Capital budgeting and the profitability index