Date: Sunday, 18 March, 2012 - 09:00 - Wednesday, 21 March, 2012 - 17:00
Location: Dubai
Duration: 4 Days
This four-day intensive public course is being hosted by a third party training provider. Contact us for more information on attending this event in Dubai. To run a course like this at your organisation, contact us for quote.
This course covers the practical usage of Excel in a budgeting context. It is designed for users who use Excel fairly regularly, and are comfortable with commonly used Excel tools and techniques. Whilst a brief overview of tools used in this course is provided, it is assumed that delegates are reasonably confident Excel users.
This course will be taught using a combination of formal instruction, combined with practical and interactive exercises and case studies used to reinforce the concepts taught in each section of the course. Case studies include critique of conventional budgeting techniques and real-world examples of problems and latest budgeting techniques and best practice guidelines.
This course is demonstrated mostly using the latest Microsoft Excel 2010, however course materials cover Excel 2003, 2007 and 2010 as well as Excel for Mac 2011. This course is very practical and hands-on. In order to complete the exercises, delegates are required to bring their own laptops with their preferred version of Excel installed.
1. Insights into defining the “uncertainties” that affect companies’ ability to produce accurate budgets, and quantify this with stress-testing, what-if and scenario analysis techniques.
2. Understand the budget planning process, preparation, review and control.
3. Discover and leverage on the different types of budgeting techniques that can be used in organisations.
4. Understand how to build budgets for the "real world", allowing for flexibility and future change.
5. Streamline budget model building by applying best practice functions, tools and techniques.
How budgeting fits into the strategic planning process
· Linking Budgets to business objectives and financial outcomes
· Budgeting to achieve organisational objectives
· How to turn measurement into management
· Determining Business objectives, long term plans, and budgets
· Translating the organisation’s mission, objectives and values into measures and targets
· Strategic planning as key to successful budget outcomes
· Communicating strategy across the business
Discussion: How is the strategic plan and budget linked and communicated in different organisations?
Why do we budget?
· Understanding the background to traditional budgeting
· Learning from best practice organisations
· Staff perceptions and changing environments
Discussion: What drives profit in your organisation?
What’s wrong with how we budget?
· Drawbacks and limitations of traditional budgeting
· Estimations and rigidity
· Dysfunctional budgeting behaviour
· Focus on value-add, rather than limitation and constraint
Discussion: Critiquing the budget process
Beyond Budgeting
· We investigate the radical “Beyond Budgeting” concept
· How does it compare to the traditional budgeting process?
· Management tools to support the process
· Case studies of organisation who have successfully implemented “Beyond Budgeting”
Discussion: Would “Beyond Budgeting” work in your organisation?
Reviewing cost structures for budget optimisation and best performance
· Managing fixed and variable costs
· Allocating and controlling overhead and support costs
· Historical vs zero-based budgeting for mandatory and discretionary costs
· Relationship of costs to outputs – cost/volume/price relationship
· Break even analysis
Practical Exercise: Budgeting for “stepped costs” with a non-linear relationship between volume and variable costs.
New techniques in budgeting
· Why next generation organisations are changing to better budgeting
· Top-down vs bottom up budgeting
· Driver-based budgeting e.g. budgets driven by industry forecasts, growth rates, market share
· Activity-based budgeting
· Flex budgets
· Priority-based budgeting
· Scenario planning in budgets
· “Soft skills” for budgeting
Exercise: Create a flex budget and an activity based budget for comparison to the master budget.
Cash Budgeting
· Budgeting cashflow
· Cash management
· Cash vs accrual accounting in budgeting
Exercise: Creating a “corkscrew” cashflow forecast
Budgeting for Capital Expenditure
· Incorporating capital investment decisions into the budget and planning process
· Capital investment evaluation techniques
· Building the capital investment business case
· Contingency planning
· Depreciation budgeting and its impact on the budget
· Budgeting for intangible assets
Discussion: Why are different budgeting techniques used for the capital budget and the operating budget?
Exercise: Create a capital expenditure register for inclusion in the budget
Consolidating the detailed budget into financial statements
· Creating a Profit & Loss statement and Balance Sheet budget
· Measures such as NPAT, EBIT and EBITDA
· Learn to calculate and analyse commonly used ratios to test your budget prior to approval
· Profitability ratios, e.g. RONA, Net Profit Ratio
· Liquidity ratios e.g. Quick ratio
· Efficiency ratios e.g. Asset Turnover, Debtor and Creditor Days
· Inventory analysis
Exercise: Calculate set of financial ratios in Excel from a pro-forma P&L and Balance Sheet.
The forecasting process – a step beyond mere budgeting
· The difference between budgeting & forecasting
· Why change from traditional budgeting to rolling forecasts?
· Techniques for designing and preparing rolling forecasts
· Forecasting for seasonality
· Identifying and using business drivers – the key to forecasting
· Utilise statistics and regression analysis tools in Excel to predict and estimate future results
· Tools and techniques to ensure forecast accuracy
Exercise: Create a rolling forecast template
· Budget reporting tools and techniques
· Financial accounting vs. management accounting
· Performing variance analysis
· Business analytics – providing decision-making information
· Exploiting business intelligence for better performance
· Transforming budgeting for better analysis and control
· Business intelligence tools for better outcomes
· Dashboard reporting in budgeting
· Benchmarking as a tool to drive budgeting
· Incorporating balanced scorecard into the budgeting process
· Identifying cost centre, profit centres and investment centres
Role Play Exercise: Case study on analysis and explanation of variances in different departments
Performance management, reporting and control
· The impact of budgets on organisational performance
· Using reporting to promote accountability
· Factors influencing performance management
· Developing successful performance management systems
· Frameworks for performance measurement and management
· Integrating forecasting and budgeting as tools for measuring performance
· Dysfunctional budgeting behaviour – games budget managers play
Exercise: Create an actual vs budget dynamic template report
· Managing Directors
· Financial Controllers
· Business Development Managers
· Business Planning Managers
· Finance Managers (in various functions)
· Business Unit / Operational Managers
· Management Accountants
· Business Analysts
· Financial Analysts
· Portfolio Management
· Capital Planning
· Treasury