Advanced Budgeting & Forecasting

This course provides delegates with an understanding of both the principles of budgeting and forecasting and the practical application of these to real-world situations through the use of Excel.

The course then builds upon the principles and practices learned to apply these to build sophisticated budgets and forecasts that are robust, flexible and user-friendly.

What You Get From This Course:

• Discover a range of techniques to improve the usability and reliability of your budget and forecast models
• Learn how to integrate budgeting and forecasting and align these processes with your business strategy
• Create forecasts that properly incorporate imprecise data and allow for uncertainties
• Gain the confidence that comes from knowing that your budgets and forecasts are robust, accurate, and reliable
• Examine and learn the following: 
• The need for change: global forces driving companies to update their budgeting and forecasting processes
• How to allow for uncertainty
• Most applicable types of budgets/ forecasts for each area of the business
• How to improve the reliability of forecasts whilst also decreasing the time taken to prepare these
• Alternate budget methodologies and how to determine which methodology applies best in different situations
• How to optimise budgets & forecasts to achieve maximum efficiency within given constraints.
• Key learning outcomes
• Understand the role of budgeting and forecasting within the enterprise.
• Learn how to integrate budgeting and forecasting and align these with your business strategy.
• Learn how to handle uncertainty within budget models.
• Learn how your organisation can become more agile and produce more accurate forecasts faster.
• Understand how and when to go beyond Excel for budgeting and forecasting solutions, and understand the enterprise-level technologies that can enable this to occur.
• Objectives 
• To provide an introduction to Budgeting and Forecasting framework within the enterprise.
• To provide an understanding of the budgeting and forecasting best practices that are being used in today’s companies.
• To enable accountants and analysts to build better, more flexible budget and forecast models.

Budgeting & Forecasting Theory:

• Budgeting & Forecasting and Strategic Planning
• Overview of strategic planning
• How budgeting and forecasting links with strategic planning
• Levels of planning, budgeting and forecasting
• Driver-based Budgeting & Forecasting
• The 4 primary types of cost and revenue drivers in organisations
• The 4 perspectives essential for considering driver-based budgeting
• The 3 key areas to be considered when formulating drivers
• Activities
• Group discussions
• Budgeting and Forecasting Challenges
• The 6 key challenges with budgeting and forecasting
• The 6 limitations of budgets and forecasts
• The Forecasting Conundrum
• Dealing with high uncertainty in budgets and forecasts
• Gaming and politics in budget negotiations
• Ways that assist in overcoming budgeting and forecasting shortcomings
• Activities
• Group discussions & activities
• Budgeting & Forecasting Techniques
• The 3 primary types of budget approaches
• The purpose, advantages, disadvantages and implementation of rolling forecasts
• The difference between forecasting and targets and the role of each
• Activities
• Individual exercise in rolling budgets
• Budgeting and Forecasting in Medium/Large Organisations
• Typical budgeting and forecasting processes
• Architecture for budgeting and forecasting models using Excel or specialised software systems
• Approaches for common budgeting and forecasting tasks:
• Connecting to data sources and importing data
• Consolidating multiple data files
• Variance analysis
• Scenarios and sensitivities
• Breakeven analysis

Pre-requisites:

Although not mandatory, attendees will get a lot more out this course if they complete some online training in Excel functions before attending. We have partnered with Excel University to provide high-quality, low-cost online training and recommend their Volume 2 Course as good preparation for this course.  If attendees are a little less familiar with Excel, Volume 1 would also very useful.