Course summary

Learn how to budget and forecast for your organisation. This training course is designed to provide financial skills to non-financial managers and staff; you will learn budgeting, project budgeting and financial evaluations.

The aim of this finance course is to provide a practical understanding of the workings of organisational budgets with the use of a budget framework. Students will build a project budget and understand the drivers of project financial evaluation methods.

This budgeting and forecasting course will include:

• how organisations use budgets and the framework of an organisation-wide budget as a strategic planning tool
• structure of a master budget; breaking it down to sales, operations, overheads budgets and the alignment to profit and loss and cash flow
• highlighting the data sources and functionality of Excel as a budgeting tool
• project budgets, financial evaluation methods of projects.

Aims

This course aims to:

• build your knowledge of budgeting and forecasting terminology and concepts
• equip you with forecasting skills, using Excel, as a precursor to setting a budget
• demonstrate alternative ways of setting an organisational budget once forecasts have been generated
• explain how to set and manage a project budget
• show you how to calculate and interpret variances once a budget is set, with a view to initiating corrective action where needed.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

• generate forecasts using a range of techniques, and incorporating these into building a budget
• prepare both a project-based and organisational-wide budget
• monitor and manage a budget by correcting for variances
• financially evaluate the payback on a capital investment using Net Present Value and Internal Rate of Return
• communicate effectively financial support staff through use of appropriate forecasting and budgeting terminology and concepts.

Content

• Budgeting and forecast theory, terminology and process
• Profit and Loss (P&L), balance sheet and cash flow budget
• Data sources and forecasting concepts, including history, market conditions and Delphi method
• Factors impacting on a budget – market conditions, internal forces, cyclical and seasonal trends
• Framework for an organisation-wide budget
• Setting an organisational-wide budget
• Measuring budget effectiveness – variance analysis
• Financial evaluation of project (Payback, basic Net Present Value and Internal Rate of Return)

Who this course is for

Suitable for anyone needing to set and manage a budget for an operational unit. This could be for a profit centre, cost centre, or in setting an expense budget.

Prerequisites

Designed for people with basic finance knowledge. This is not an Excel course, it will assist you if you are familiar with simple formulas in Excel. Course work is designed to include practical work examples using case studies, and you will work to complete basic mathematic budget calculations. Representation of key concepts will be demonstrated in Excel and students will receive a copy of all Excel modelling demonstrated.

Delivery modes

• Face-to-face, presenter-taught training in a computer lab
• Online training via the platform Zoom

Materials

Course materials are distributed electronically using Dropbox.

What you need to do before the course

To participate in this course, you will need Microsoft Excel installed on your device.

Face-to-face classes

Classes run in a computer lab. You do not need to bring your own device.

Online classes

For the best experience, we recommend using a computer with a large monitor or dual screens/devices. Small laptop screens can make it difficult to follow the facilitator’s display while working in the software.

Course Brochure