How to Plan and Monitor a Budget

An effective budget serves as a road map for your organization's future growth. This course will teach you how to build in contingencies and wisely plan for unforeseen circumstances, making your budget a planning tool with maximum flexibility. You'll see immediate and direct benefits from these practical, hands-on budget principles and strategies.

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The Budgeting Process: The Essential Concepts

• Solid reasons good budgets lead to better, more effective management:
• The budget as a measurement of performance — yours, your staff’s, your department’s and your organization’s.
• Strategies for controlling expenses without sacrificing flexibility or efficiency.
• How to convert major planning issues to manageable dollars-and-cents budgets.
• Solid methods to turn business goals into measurable, achievable fiscal actions.
• Proven budgeting concepts for realistic short- and long-term planning:
• The vital differences in short-term and long-term budgets and how each type guides you to more prudent management decision-making.
• Proven outlines and guidelines for the major types of budgets:
• Capital budgets that generate an expedient rate of return while precisely calculating years to payback.
• Operating budgets that accurately coordinate every operating area of your organization.
• How cash budgets maximize profitability and efficient management of resources.
• Insightful advice on understanding your organization’s budget philosophy:
• How to interpret top management’s fiscal philosophy and what it means to your budget practices and responsibilities.
• The specific blueprints of different budget approaches and how they incorporate the most important goals and objectives of management.
• Proven procedures that pinpoint budget goals and objectives:
• How to organize your goals into a workable framework you can translate into dollars-and- cents budgets.
• The effect of your major objectives on your budgets, line for line.
• Functional timetables for every budgeting action:
• A step-by-step schedule that works smoothly within your organization’s existing fiscal framework.
• The specific effects of seasonal factors on your budget.
• How sound agendas for monthly, quarterly, annual and multi-year budgets point the way for your organization.

Budget Terms and Concepts Made Easy

• Simple techniques to classify costs:
• The vital differences between direct and indirect costs.
• How costs beyond your control can directly affect your budget performance.
• Specific definitions that pinpoint cost behavior:
• The distinctive, different elements of fixed and variable costs.
• Simple formulas that estimate the impact of unforeseen increases or decreases in either fixed or variable costs.
• Step-by-step methods for determining the break- even point:
• How to set realistic break-even goals within your operational budgets.
• Ways to minimize the impact of budget variances on long-term profit objectives.
• Prudent tactics for handling unit indicators:
• How to identify cost-based unit indicators and accurately forecast their impact on your operations.
• Special tactics for hard-to-forecast, productivity-based unit indicators.
• Down-to-earth advice on basic budgeting methods:
• Simple guidelines for zero-based budgeting to cut fat and reduce inefficiency.
• When and how to use average-cost budgeting techniques.
• Flexible budgeting methods that solve the unusual challenges faced by your department or organization.

Capital Expenditures and How to Use Them to Attain Your Goals for Future Growth

• Specific terms and tactics peculiar to capital items:
• Simple definitions and formulas that explain average rate of return and years to payback.
• The key, common elements that characterize a capital expenditure.
• Depreciation principles that ensure expedient payback of capital expenditures.
• Pertinent procedures for managing the many different types of capital expense:
• Specific budget strategies for land and buildings.
• The 3 types of capital equipment and specific budget tactics for each type.
• Powerful budget principles that justify capital expenditures:
• Step-by-step formulas to easily calculate payback.
• A look at capital rate-of-return with a manageable framework for multi-year capital budgets.
• When to use discounted cash flow methods to justify capital expenditures.
• Insightful solutions to the buy vs. lease question
• How to interpret the effects on operating budgets of lease and buy scenarios with smart budget tactics for both approaches.
• Solid advice to determine the advantages and disadvantages of capital leases.

Budget Principles Applied to Real-Life Situations

• The power of the Sales Budget:
• The primary importance of the sales budget and how it drives every other budget in your organization.
• Smart forecasting rules for accurate, realistic sales budgets.
• Convincing reasons to avoid the antiquated sales budget method of fixed percentage increases.
• How to weave sales forecasts, marketing plans and sales expenses into one cohesive budget.
• Plus, produce an actual sales budget in an exciting group participation project.
• Production, Materials and Labor budgets — the essential elements of the manufacturing plant:
• Practical methods to plan for the unknown in cost of raw materials.
• How to calculate labor expenses and account for fluctuations in the “productivity factor.”
• The many components of manufacturing overhead and how it affects the cost of goods manufactured.
• Specific pointers that precisely account for cost of inventory.
• How to employ special merchandise-purchased budgeting techniques for the non-manufacturing organization.
• Plus, produce an actual manufacturing budget in an exciting group participation project.
• Marketing budgets that meet and exceed your organization’s goals and objectives:
• How to produce a flexible marketing budget with contingencies for market fluctuations and unforeseen competitive factors.
• Benchmarks and standards for allocating marketing dollars.
• Practical methods for evaluating marketing goals in concrete dollar terms for budgets.
• Plus, produce an actual marketing budget in an exciting group participation project.
• Administrative budgets that maximize efficiency without spiraling costs:
• How to determine the best administrative budgeting procedure for your organization’s structure.
• Proven techniques for evaluating administrative effectiveness and performance through predetermined budget objectives.
• How to set cost priorities to keep administrative budgets under control.
• Plus, produce an actual administrative budget in an exciting group participation project.
• Cash budgets that harness the power of your organization’s resources:
• How to maximize investment profits by putting your excess cash flow to work.
• The importance of recognizing cash shortfalls before a financial crisis develops.
• A simple formula that accurately budgets cash balances.
• How the costs of accounts receivable are driven by credit sales.
• Why you must accurately assess your future financial needs through realistic cash budgets.
• Plus, produce an actual cash budget in an exciting group participation project.