Budgeting & Financial Forecasting
Overview
Budgets and forecasts turn plans into numbers and help organisations allocate resources and control performance. This course covers budgeting approaches, building operating and capital budgets, forecasting techniques, rolling forecasts and using variance analysis to steer performance.
Who should attend
Budget officers, financial analysts, accountants, finance managers, and department heads with budget responsibility.
Training methodology
Interactive presentations, practical exercises, case studies, group discussions, role-plays where relevant, and a personal action plan that participants apply in their own work.
Objectives
By the end of this course, participants will be able to:
- Compare budgeting approaches and choose the right one
- Prepare operating and capital budgets
- Apply forecasting techniques and rolling forecasts
- Analyse variances and recommend actions
- Link budgets to strategy and performance
Course outline
Day 1Budgeting Fundamentals
- Purpose of budgets
- Budget cycle
- Incremental, zero-based and activity-based budgeting
- Behavioural issues
- Discussion
Day 2Operating Budgets
- Revenue budgets
- Cost budgets
- Staff budgets
- Master budget
- Budget exercise
Day 3Capital Budgets and Cash
- Capital expenditure planning
- Project evaluation basics
- Cash budgets
- Funding needs
- Exercise
Day 4Forecasting
- Forecasting methods
- Trend and seasonality
- Driver-based forecasting
- Rolling forecasts
- Forecasting lab
Day 5Control and Performance
- Variance analysis
- Flexible budgets
- Reporting to management
- Budget and KPIs
- Action plan
