Budgeting, Forecasting & Planning

Overview
Forecasting and budgeting continue to be the mainstay of business planning tools but for many, it remains the domain of management accountants and is often not fully understood, even by those who are measured against them. This course will provide a strategic context, along with a variety of tools and techniques in how to carefully plan a budget and forecast financial information. The basic theory required gaining an understanding of the accounting concepts and terminology used will be reviewed, along with forecasting theory, and how to illustrate this in practice using Excel. Further forecasting techniques that are often employed to assess the viability of a project, along with the advantages and disadvantages of various decision tools are examined. Most importantly, the course sets out the practical steps required to build, present and amend a forecast or budget. Participants will be given the opportunity to apply skills learned throughout the day to their own project. Laptops are required.

Objectives:
How to:
• Learn how to create and understand forecasts and budgets
• Learn how to use budgets to measure performance and make decisions
• Take forecasting further by learning key theory techniques to improve forecast results
• Develop an understanding of key financial indicators and ratios
• Discover techniques to assess project risk
• Learn how to plan an effective budget or forecast that’s useful and practical

How to:
• List and differentiate between the important components of basic financial statements.
• Explain financial statements’ ratios and formulate excel sheets and graphs for financial. statements analysis.
• Illustrate creative accounting schemes and critique the validity of accounting rules used.
• Assess quality of financial reports and
evaluate quality of earnings and cash flows reported.
• Analyze financial position and performance of a company over a period of time and draw conclusions regarding its sustainability.

Activities:
• The Budgeting Pyramid: cash budgeting to capital budgeting
• Introducing the cash budget
• Introducing the Revenue Budget
• Introducing Capital Budgeting
• Relating the budgets to the Balance Sheet and the P & L.
• The essentials of Working Capital.