Budget Preparation, Allocation and Cost Control

About the Course

Effective budget management and cost control are crucial for contemporary organisations. In a modern world, companies want to stay competitive; they are urged to consider process value added to customers/shareholders. Along this line, budgeting, tracking, controlling & reducing costs are essential activities organisations should monitor efficiently as they implement their key processes, activities, and operations. Furthermore, budgeting is simply balancing expenses and income. If you can make up for it and spend more than you earn, your business will be able to handle and avoid taking on more debt each year. If your business doesn't have enough money to do everything it wants to do, you can use the planning process to prioritise your expenses and focus your money on what matters most.

This 5-day interactive Budget Preparation, Allocation and Cost Control training course is relevant for those professionals & analysts facing the difficult challenge of improving performance while optimising the costs of those processes for which they are accountable. It is essential for organisations and assists them in the decision-making and planning process. It provides the delegates with crucial cost awareness and budgetary skills by combining techniques analysis, problems, and examples of real case studies, which is essential in managing and controlling processes/projects in times of increasing global competition where the budgets should be viewed within the context of both strategy formulation and cost analysis.

Core Objectives

The delegates will achieve the following objectives:

• Know how to build integrated planning, budgeting, and reporting processes successfully
• Understand cost behaviour more accurately
• Deliver more timely and valuable information to decision-makers
• Understand capital budgeting
• Identify & manage key financial indicators for the business
• Use specific cost analysis and performance measurement techniques
• Understand and implement the Balanced Scorecards
• Interpret the financial impact of strategic directions
• Understand the problems of overhead allocation and how Activity-Based Analysis may aid decision-making and pricing strategies
• Select the performance measurement systems that work

Training Approach

This training course combines theory and practice; therefore, in addition to lectures based on PowerPoint Presentations, discussions, and exercises, it uses company examples to illustrate how the techniques presented have been applied in real case studies.

The Attendees

This training course is aimed at the financial industry and broadens and expands delegates' knowledge of the most important financial aspects of budgeting, forecasting, and control.

It will be suitable to the professionals but not limited to the following:

• Financial Professionals
• R&D Professionals
• Sales& Marketing Professionals
• General Accounting Professionals
• Business Unit Professionals
• Professionals in charge of designing and managing a Budgetary System
• Staff Members in charge of data entry into the budget system
• Professionals who want to gain control of the firm's financial standing and obtain a firm grasp on the numbers side of their job
• Others who want to understand the basics of budgeting, costing, and performance measurement

Daily Discussion

DAY ONE: BUDGETING & COST CONTROL IN THE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM – LINK WITH STRATEGIC PLANNING

• Budgeting and the Management System of Contemporary Organisations
• Strategic Planning, Budgeting, and Management Control
• Strategic Management Accounting: Setting Goals and Objectives
• From Strategic to Operating Plans: Actions and Initiatives
• Measuring and Managing the Performance: KPIs and Targets
• Managerial Accountability 

DAY TWO: BUDGETING – PRINCIPLES AND KEY CONCEPTS

• Understanding the Context for Budgeting
• The Benefit of Budgeting and its Role in Achieving Organisational Targets
• The Shortcomings of the Budgeting Process: How can we improve them?
• Principles of Budgeting
• Main Issues with Budget Preparation
• CapEx (Capital Expenditures) vs OpEx (Operational Expenditures)

DAY THREE: COST ANALYSIS FOR BUDGETARY PURPOSES

• Cost Concepts and Terminology
• Different Costs for Different Purposes
• Fixed vs Variable Costs: The Cost-Volume-Profit Analysis Model
• Contribution Margin Analysis
• Manufacturing vs Non-manufacturing Costs
• Period vs Product Costs

DAY FOUR: TRADITIONAL VS ADVANCED TECHNIQUES IN COST-CONTROL

• Under-costing and Over-costing: Understand Allocation Methods
• How do we refine the costing system?
• Indirect (OH) vs Direct Costs
• Traditional Cost Allocations Systems vs Activity-Based Costing (ABC)
• Cost Hierarchy & Cost Drivers: Linking Resources, Activities and Management
• Introducing Activity-Based Budgeting (ABB) and Management (ABM) 

DAY FIVE: NEW INTEGRATED PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT SYSTEMS

• Beyond Budgeting: Integrating Financial and Pre-financial Information
• The Drivers of Value Creation
• The Balanced Scorecard
• Strategy Maps
• Integrated Reporting