Why Attend

This course is the second level course in budgeting after Meirc's 'Effective Budgeting and Cost Control' course. It goes beyond the theory of budgeting as a concept to cover specific steps to make the budget a value-added process in the organization. By building user-friendly models and applying scenario analysis, management will spend less time gathering data and more time analyzing this data for decision making. Several Microsoft Excel tools are used throughout this course for practicality and to provide participants with the skills needed to apply in their organization immediately. Such tools include 'what-if' analysis and the 'solver', among many others.

The course also highlights some of the main forecasting models and the detailed evaluation of capital budgeting techniques, all of which are applied in Microsoft Excel and put into practice.

The course is a hands-on application on how to use MS Excel in budgeting and forecasting. Participants will be involved in exercises, individual and group presentations, and will work on several case studies.

Course Objectives

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

• Evaluate the budgeting process in their organizations and recommend improvements
• Create budget templates and models for their departments or organizations
• Apply several forecasting techniques to better manage uncertainties in budgeting
• Evaluate capital budgeting decisions using several methods and recommend proper action
• Utilize Microsoft Excel functions and tools in the budgeting process including breakeven analysis and optimization

Target Audience

Finance directors, managers, controllers, accountants, budget analysts, budget owners and professionals who wish to expand their budgeting knowledge.

Target Competencies

• Budgeting
• Building models in Microsoft Excel
• Forecasting
• Evaluating proposals
• Applying Microsoft Excel functions and tools
• Assessing budgeting process