Budgeting and Forecasting for Business
Build an annual budget, rolling forecast and variance report.
Taught by Manisha Bhattarai · ACCA, Finance Manager
What you'll learn
- Distinguish budgets, forecasts and targets and choose the right planning cycle for a business
- Build a driver-based revenue budget from volume, price, conversion and retention assumptions
- Budget fixed, variable and headcount costs with phasing that reflects how the business actually spends
- Produce a cash flow budget that links profit to working capital and shows when funding is needed
- Maintain a rolling forecast with base, upside and downside scenarios from one assumption table
- Flex the budget and explain price, volume, efficiency and spend variances to a leadership audience
About this course
Budgets and forecasts are how a business turns strategy into numbers and then checks whether reality is keeping up. This course is for finance analysts, management accountants, ACCA and CIMA students and business owners who need to build an annual budget, maintain a rolling forecast and explain variances to leadership. You will build a driver-based revenue budget, cost and headcount budgets, a cash flow budget, a rolling twelve-month forecast with scenarios and a flexed-budget variance report, working in Excel or Google Sheets with a little Python for the heavy lifting. Prerequisites: comfortable spreadsheet skills and a basic grasp of the profit and loss statement. The techniques follow the management accounting practice covered in the ACCA Performance Management syllabus and used daily in financial planning and analysis teams.
Course content
6 lessons- 1Budgets, Forecasts and Targets: What Each Is ForWhy budgets and forecasts answer different questions, and how the annual planning cycle fits together.Preview
- 2Driver-Based Revenue BudgetsModel revenue from the operational drivers that cause it rather than a percentage on last year.
- 3Cost and Headcount BudgetsBudget fixed, variable and stepped costs, and build the headcount schedule that drives most of them.
- 4Cash Flow Budgets and Working CapitalConvert the profit and loss budget into a monthly cash budget and find the months that need funding.
- 5Rolling Forecasts and Scenario PlanningKeep a live twelve-month view of the business and model upside and downside cases from one set of inputs.
- 6Variance Analysis and Presenting to LeadershipFlex the budget, split variances into price, volume, efficiency and spend, and tell the story clearly.