In this course, learners will have a deeper understanding of the budgeting process, its challenges, common issues, and approaches to mitigate the problems and improve the learning curve of budget planning. It is integrative by emphasizing the transition between the corporate strategy and the budget. It is practical by following a structured process of going through a framework that illustrates and demonstrates how to analyze, develop and control the budget.
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The Budgeting Essentials and Development course focus on an integrative and practical view of concepts, methods, and techniques to develop a budget.
After finishing this course, learners will be able to:
- Develop the budget with a broad view of the corporate functions;
- Integrate the strategic guidelines into the discussions of budgeting process;
- Structure the budget planning and development in a logical sequence
- Coordinate the project of budget planning with the different areas of the company
- Actively promote assumptions discussions to improve the process of developing the budget
- Apply financial concepts to support the budget planning process
- Design a budget monitoring and control model to support the performance management
- Evaluate the performance of the company by managing the results and the budget
Syllabus
WEEK 1
Strategy & Budgeting - Planning & Controlling
As the budgeting process needs strategic guidelines, and these guidelines drive the planning process, corporate managers develop the budget plan accordingly to the strategic guidelines.The budget contributes to the roll-out of programs, projects, and actions to implement in the organization. These programs and projects are planned in the budget development process. In this module of the course, the discussions aim to overview the transition between strategy to the budget planning process. The course is targeted to professionals who actively participate in the budgeting process, e.g., professionals who have been recently promoted to a managing position, in which the scope of responsibilities are broader, especially in the budget planning, monitoring, and control. Pre-requisites to benefit the most from this course is basic to intermediate business management knowledge and concepts.
WEEK 2
Corporate budgeting
The corporate budgeting process begins with the strategic guidelines, goes through the discussions of what may be the influence of the guidelines on the assumptions, and culminate in supporting the budget planning process. In this module, the discussions are about the aspects related to this process. Learning objectives include understanding the link between corporate budgeting and the business unit budgeting process; aligning strategic guidelines with planning guidelines, and assessing the connections of the corporate budget to the business level budget.
WEEK 3
The company operations and the Budget
In this module, the discussion goes through a step-by-step framework to support the budget development. Each of the steps represents a relevant component of the budget, and the links between the budget of each area of the company are discussed. The integration of the different area's budget is one of the primary objectives of this module, which will lead learners to an integrative view of the budget development. And this integration is the key learning objective of the module.
WEEK 4
The company operations and the Budget
In this module, the discussion goes through a step-by-step framework to support the budget development. Each of the steps represents a relevant component of the budget, and the links between the budget of each area of the company are discussed. The integration of the different area's budget is one of the primary objectives of this module, which will lead learners to an integrative view of the budget development. And this integration is the key learning objective of the module.
WEEK 5
Financial and reporting model
In this module, we will develop an understanding of how to consolidate the reporting model on the budget, through a financial approach with emphasis on a budget perspective. To build this knowledge, we will walk through a conceptual overview and components, visit an overall managerial view of profits and losses, work on the cash budget and forecasting cash-flow concepts and application. We also discuss the accounting reports and the relevance of the financial and non-financial indicators.
WEEK 6
Budget control
This module focuses on the “control” side of the budget. We understand how to apply concepts, and will be guided on how to monitor and measure results, analyze and evaluate the potential gaps between actual and estimated outcomes.
WEEK 7
Planning Process – Approaches and evolution
Approaches and evolution: In this module, you will learn by reflecting about the different approaches to planning processes. We will walk with you through the aspects of efficiency and efficacy, connecting with budgeting. We will also debate traditional versus some trended methodological approaches, their benefits, and limitations. This Module closes our Course.
