Description:

The budget lies at the epicenter of the firm's planning and control process. The quality of the firm's management system is ultimately dependent on lucid financial plans integrated with budget-based control systems. Then it's up to management to interpret the budget with a view towards optimizing profit, cash flow and shareholder value. In this class, you will develop budgets, using hands-on, PC-based spreadsheet techniques.

Objectives:

• Develop major elements of the Master Budget including pro forma balance sheets, income statements and cash flow budget
• Explore capital budgets, zero-based budgets, activity-based budgets, break-even (contribution margin) budgets, Economic Value Added (EVA) budgets and Bankruptcy Avoidance budgets

Major Topics:

• Budget development, preparation, analysis and control
• Pro forma financial statements
• Identify major trends in cash budgeting and cash-flow planning
• Develop accurate budgets that link to business and strategic plans
• Cost control and management
• Profit planning
• Sales and marketing budgets
• Financial budget-modeling tools
• R&D and capital budgets
• Improve budget planning and control systems to guide the financial future of the firm
• Learn to control budget variance
• Case studies and "what-if" analyses
• Risk quantification and analysis
• Best practices in budgeting

Who Should Attend:

Accounting analysts, auditors, CFOs, Controllers, financial managers and operations managers

Prerequisite:

None

Advanced preparation:

None