Budgeting, Forecasting and Cost Control

Plan with discipline and keep spending under control.

5 daysIntermediate8 modules

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Overview

About this course

Plan with discipline and keep spending under control. Over five days you will learn how to build operating, capital and cash budgets, choose the right budgeting approach for your organisation and replace static annual plans with rolling forecasts.

You will also analyse cost behaviour, calculate and explain variances, and design practical cost control measures, working through spreadsheet exercises that you can adapt to your own department. An Alalamia certificate is awarded on completion.

What you'll learn

Explain the role of budgeting in planning, control and accountability
Prepare operating budgets for sales, production, expenses and staffing
Build capital expenditure and cash budgets
Use rolling and driver-based forecasts to update plans
Classify costs and apply cost-volume-profit analysis
Analyse budget variances and recommend corrective action
Design practical cost control and cost reduction measures
Report budget performance clearly to managers

Curriculum

8 modules

The purpose of budgeting
The budget cycle and calendar
Roles and responsibilities
Behavioural aspects of budgeting

Incremental budgeting
Zero-based budgeting
Activity-based budgeting
Fixed and flexible budgets

Sales and revenue budget
Production and purchasing budgets
Expense and staffing budgets
Assembling the master budget

Capital expenditure budget
Appraising capital requests
Preparing the cash budget
Managing cash shortfalls and surpluses

Forecasting methods
Rolling forecasts
Driver-based forecasting
Forecasting under inflation and uncertainty

Fixed, variable and mixed costs
Cost-volume-profit and break-even analysis
Cost centres and cost allocation
Standard costing

Calculating budget variances
Price, volume and efficiency variances
Investigating the causes of variances
Taking corrective action

Cost reduction techniques
Key performance indicators and dashboards
Reporting budget performance to management
Practical budgeting workshop

Who it's for

Accountants, budget holders, finance officers and department managers responsible for planning and controlling costs.

Before you start

Basic knowledge of accounting
Working knowledge of Microsoft Excel

Diplomas

Part of these Alalamia diplomas

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