Budgeting, Forecasting And Planning

Managers have financial responsibilities and many have budgets to write and control and face many decisions that require forecasting and planning i.e. preparing their budgets. 

Using Oil and gas industry examples and exercises, this course aims to break down some of the financial barriers in an entertaining and informative style, with numerous examples. Bring your calculator. It gives an insight into the world of budgeting for financial and non-financial managers and professionals.

Objective:

• Define Planning and its Purpose
• Describe the Planning and Budgeting Cycle
• Explain the Strategic Planning Process
• Describe the Major Elements of the Annual Business Plan
• Understand why you must link budgeting and forecasting to planning and performance
• Describe and Perform the Basic Steps in Preparing a Comprehensive (Master) Budget
• Prepare a Capital Budget
• Determine and Investigate Budget Variances

Outline:

• Day 1: Introduction
• The Planning Process
• Need and system of Plans
• Steps in Developing the Near-Term Sales Plan
• Sales Forecasting
• How to measure cost behaviour using the account analysis, high-low, visual-fit, and least-squares regression Methods?
• Day 2: Budget and Budgeting
• Definition of Budget 
• Strategic Focus on Budgeting
• What are the Advantages of Budgets?
• Management Support
• Time Coverage of Budgets
• Types of Budgets
• Day 3: Budgeting and Planning
• Strategic Planning and Budgeting Process 
• Why must you link budgeting and Forecasting to Planning and Performance?
• Budget Participants and Budget Preparation Procedure.
• Participative Budgeting and the Importance of Communication in an Effective Planning Process.
• Building the Budgeting Model
• Prepare the budget structure
• Writing the budges
• Monitoring
• Comprehensive (Master) Budgeting
• How to manage the cash Resource
• Objectives of Cash flow and Working Capital Management
• Cash flow Reporting
• Day 4: Capital Budgeting
• What is Capital Expenditure?
• Nature of Capital Investment Decisions
• What is Capital Budget?
• Stages of Capital Budgeting Process
• Relevant Cash Flows
• Methods of Evaluating Capital Investments
• Day 5: Budgeting and Control
• Flexible Budget and Overhead Analysis
• The advantages of the flexible budget approach over the static budget approach.
• Prepare a performance report for variable and fixed overhead costs using the flexible budget approach.
• Use the flexible budget to prepare a variable overhead performance report containing only a spending variance
• Use the flexible budget to prepare a variable overhead performance report containing spending and efficiency variance.
• Explain the significance of the denominator activity figure in determining the standard cost of unity of the product.
• Apply overhead cost to units of product in a standard cost system.
• Compute and interpret the fixed overhead budget and volume variances.
• Variances Investigation