Certificate in Advanced Budgeting and Financial Forecasting

Certificate in Advanced Budgeting and Financial Forecasting

Methodology

This course focuses on how to use MS Excel and apply exercises, case studies, and individual and group presentations.

Course Objectives

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Evaluate the budgeting process in organizations and recommend improvements.
• Create budget models for their departments and organizations.
• Apply various forecasting techniques to manage uncertainty in budgets effectively.
• Evaluate capital budgeting decisions using different methods and select the appropriate course of action.
• Utilize Microsoft Excel tools and functions in the budgeting process.

Target Audience

Financial management employees, managers, auditors, accountants, budget analysts, and professionals who want to expand their knowledge in budgeting.

Training Program Content

Planning and Budgeting

• Strategic development framework.
• Three dimensions of the growth model.
• Resource allocation and strategic budgeting.
• Growth share matrix.
• Nine-box matrix.

Budgets and Financial Basics

• Budgeting methods, processes, and cycles.
• Budgeting phases.
• Successful budgeting characteristics.
• Making budgets a value-added activity.
• Top ten common budgeting problems.
• Selecting the appropriate budgeting method:
  • Incremental budgeting.
  • Zero-based budgeting.
  • Flexible budgeting.
  • Kaizen budgeting for continuous improvement.
  • Activity-based budgeting.
• Rolling budgets and forecasts.
• Comprehensive budgeting and its components.
• Operational and capital budgets.
• Best practices in budgeting.
• Creating an easy-to-use budget model.

Forecasting Techniques

• Forecasting models.
• Quantitative and qualitative methods.
• Steps in developing forecasting models.
• Time series and trend analysis.
• Data manipulation techniques.
• Moving averages.
• Simple and multiple regression analysis.
• Building models for expected financial data.
• Overall and partial forecasting factors.
• Sales forecasting.
• Market demand estimation.
• Company demand estimation.
• Developing sales forecasting.
• Sales cost estimation.
• Operating expense forecasting.
• Forecasting key asset and liability accounts.
• Building an expected income statement model.
• Building an expected budgeted balance sheet model.

Advanced Capital Budgeting Evaluation Techniques

• Business risks and the cost of capital.
• Investment project classification.
• Cash flow estimation.
• Investment and operating cash flow analysis.
• Time value of money.
• Required rate of return.
• Net Present Value (NPV).
• Internal Rate of Return (IRR).
• Multiple Internal Rates of Return (MIRR).
• Profitability Index (PI).
• Payback period and discounted payback period.
• Capital rationing.
• Comparing and evaluating different techniques.
• Sensitivity and risk analysis.
• Breakeven and optimization techniques.
• Cost-Volume-Profit (CVP) analysis.
• Using CVP analysis to achieve target income.
• Breakeven analysis for single and multiple products.

Dealing with Budget Constraints and Limitations

• Building models for optimization.