Budgets and Forecasts Course for Organisations

Finance. Open to everyone.

Manage finance the smart way with Finance courses at CCE, The University of Sydney.

Learn how to budget and forecast for your organisation with this budgeting and forecasting training course. Designed to provide financial skills to non-financial managers and staff, you will learn budgeting, project budgeting and financial evaluations.

The aim of this budgeting 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:

• Why organisations use budgets, the framework of an organization-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

Course content

This budgets and forecasts course will include the following content:

• Budgeting theory, jargon and process.
• Profit and Loss (P&L), and cash flow budget.
• Framework of an organization-wide budget.
• Data sources, forecasting concepts and Excel.
• Change and influence to effective budgeting.
• Measuring budget effectiveness – variance analysis.
• Project budgets (capital investment analysis).
• Financial evaluation of Project (Payback, basic NPV and IRR).
• Building project budget.
• Impact of changes in a project financial performance.

Course outcomes

Upon completion of this budgeting and forecasting course, participants should be able to:

• Outline the structure of a Master Budget
• Have a strong understanding of challenges and critical concepts of building a budget
• Read budget variance reports and identify areas for review
• Build a project budget
• Have a strong understanding of project financial evaluation methods of payback, and discounted cash flow techniques Net Present Value (NPV) & Internal Rate of Return (IRR)

Delivery

This budgets and forecasts course for organisations is delivered as a hands-on, computer-based training with demonstration of live examples and group discussion.

Course suitable for

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