Course suitable for: Suitable for budget holders, cost centre managers, and those who manage department or event budgets who wish to acquire first principles or refresh ideas and approaches. This course deals with so-called management accounting. If you are also interested in financial accounting (Profit and Loss, Balance Sheet analysis etc), then you may want to consider as an alternative, one of the following two day courses that cover both those areas: For managers: Finance for non-financial Managers For Office Professionals: Making Sense of Finance
Budgeting Preparation
- Budgeting: a famous word but what does it mean? Constructing a definition
- Overview of the budget process (procedures, manuals, timelines)
- Case study: reviewing a simple budget scenario
- Being clear about initial assumptions and limiting factors
- Knowing where to find information that might be needed
- Analysing potential income and expenditure: what events and occurrences do we need to consider? Internal, external, definite and uncertain
- Nature and behaviour of costs
- Charging department expenditure to the correct period - accruals, prepayments and depreciation
- Break-even analysis
- Stock forecasting and how to calculate the minimum quantity needed
- Apportioning overheads
Facing the Actuals
- What are the variances and why are they important?
- The budget is the plan i.e. understanding the need to proactively work towards budget and adhere to budget.
- Comparing actuals to budgeted monthly
- Comparing actuals to budgeted year to date
- Understanding the significance of changes in variances
- Flexing the budget
The Cash Budget
- Why they are needed? Do high profits necessarily mean everything is going well?
- Case study: preparing a cash budget
Presenting the Departmental Budget
- Giving clear information
- Presenting the main variables
- Getting agreement
- Putting it clearly onto paper
Reporting on the Budget
- Preparing a report
- Providing the information to make decisions
Personal Development
- Action planning - the essential next steps
- Continuous professional development - what next?
Further courses to consider
Introduction to Company Accounts
Testimonial
Itoro Assam, Finance Officer Roehampton University I attended the 'Managing Budgets Effectively' course and thought it was extremely enlightening. I thoroughly enjoyed Variance Analysis, Forecasting and Reforecasting. The tutor's presentation was also very good and I have since put much of what I learnt to practice in the University.
