About

“Excellent seminar to attend, got an overall view on budgeting and forecasting. Well structured and well presented.”
Sarita Chandra, Senior Business Analyst, Department of Corrections

“Kevin had a lot of examples to share with us which made it very interesting.”
Angela French, Team Leader - Group Reporting, Fonterra Co-operative Group

Are you frustrated with your current budgeting processes, looking to reduce the time & effort involved in preparing and managing your budgets and would like to learn how to more accurately forecast for the future?

Increasingly, organisations are seeing the importance of accurate and efficient budgeting techniques in shaping a more successful and prosperous organisation overall. Traditional techniques are still widely used but, for many, they are seen as increasingly out of alignment with today’s requirements.

Practical Budgeting & Forecasting for Accountants and Senior Managers is one of our most popular seminars and will teach you how to create a more meaningful budget, and how to use this budget to more effectively make important financial decisions. Throughout this course, participants will identify effective methods for translating your organisation’s strategic initiatives into measurable financial targets.

Participants will also gain insight into the ways in which they can accurately forecast for the future, rather than just ‘keeping up-to-date’, and discover how to streamline the budgeting process to save valuable time, money and resources.

Training style

The emphasis of this training seminar is learning strategic budgeting concepts through practical examples. This intensive two-day programme will combine tutorial sessions with practical case studies throughout, allowing participants to gain first hand experience of practical budgeting skills.

Key learning objectives

Participants will leave this training seminar with benefits that are direct, immediate and measurable.
Learn how to:
• Create positive budgets that motivate members of your organisation
• Use incentives when defining your budget
• Keep your budget relevant to your organisation’s needs
• Strategically link your budget to management action and decisions
• Translate your organisation’s values into measures and targets
• Avoid the major weaknesses of traditional budgeting techniques
• Create an adaptive performance measurement framework
• Use alternative techniques to traditional budgeting
• Understand Activity Based Budgeting (ABB)
• Maximise capital budgeting techniques

Who should attend?

• Management Accountants
• Business Accountants
• CFOs
• Finance Directors
• Directors
• Finance Managers
• Financial Controllers
• Commercial Managers
• Strategic Planning/Development Managers
• Financial Analysts
• Business Analysts
• Partners
• Senior Managers

Outline

Day one

8.30am Registration

An overview of budgeting
• Why do so many managers dislike the traditional budgetary system?
• Exposing the deficiencies of traditional budgeting systems and the accounting limitations of the budgeting process
• The three Ps of budgeting: Purpose, process, people
• Budgets versus forecasts
• Who should prepare: Knowing when to sell, tell, participate or delegate
• Historical versus forecasted
• Incremental versus zero based budgeting
Practical exercise

Techniques for preparing budgets and forecasts
• Accurately identifying unrealistic targets
• Pinpointing the interplay between budgets and forecasts
• Successfully integrating forecasting and budgeting as essential tools for measuring performance
• Incorporating the variables to establish accurate indicators and benchmarks
• Creating an adaptive performance measurement framework

Beyond control: Creating budgets that motivate
• Measuring the negative impact on organisational performance
• Person and group motivation
• Goal congruence and goal internalisation
• Equating authority with responsibility
• Separability and controllability/influence
• Budget targets: Historical, Ideal, Stretch or Highly Achievable?
• The use of incentives, the importance of using the SMART acronym
Practical exercise

Budgeting and strategy: Strategically linking budgets to management action
• Why should budgets and strategy be more closely linked?
• How does budgeting fit within the overall context of business planning and performance monitoring?
• Aligning your budget with your organisation’s business strategy
• Translating your organisation’s values into measure and targets
Practical exercise

Budget participation
• Bottom-up versus top-down
• Zero based budgeting
• Influence of strategy
• Environmental uncertainty

Budget evaluation
• What are the major weaknesses of traditional budgeting?
• Influence of strategy
• Loose versus tight control
• ROI and EVA
• JIT and TQM
Practical exercise

Day two

Activity based budgeting (ABB) and cost management
• How does activity based budgeting (ABB) and activity based costing (ABC) fit together?
• Overview of the general principles of activity based costing
• What is activity based budgeting and how can it be used to help you manage your costs more effectively than traditional budgeting techniques?
• What are the most effective methods for managing overhead/support costs?
• Analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of each method
• What are the most effective techniques for successful cost management?
• How can cost management be supported by an effective budget system?
Practical exercise

Non-financial budgets
• Identifying and addressing the problems of using budgets as the primary tool for performance measurement
• Is there a wider role for budgets beyond income and costs?
• Understanding and evaluating new creative techniques for performance measurement
• What are the budgetary implications for intangible assets?
• Applying the techniques to your own business
• Management tools for strategic budgeting
• Value based management
• Balanced scorecard
• Quality models

Maximising capital budgeting
• Capital versus operating expenditure
• What are the budgetary implications of capital budgeting?
• Capital investments as strategic investment decisions
• How should you budget for capital/fixed asset investments?
• Common pitfalls of traditional techniques
Practical exercise

Building a rolling forecast process
• How do rolling forecasts work in practice?
• What are the benefits of implementing a rolling forecast process?
• The role of the finance function in driving the rolling forecast process
• Using non-financial measures and activity based budgeting in rolling forecasts
• Cost management in a rolling forecast environment
• Linking strategic planning and rolling forecasts
Practical exercise

Facilitator

Kevin Lee, Director, Business Skills Training

Kevin Lee BA (Hons), Pg Dip, MBA, ACMA runs a consultancy for business skills development.  He is a Chartered Management Accountant with 20 years experience of Government Agencies, Corporates and SME’s.  Kevin is a member of the New Zealand Association for Training and Development, the Human Resources Institute for New Zealand and accredited as a Belbin Team Role facilitator.  His post-graduate qualifications include a post-graduate diploma in business administration with distinction and an MBA in which he majored in finance.  

Kevin specialises in helping managers and staff to develop practical financial skills and knowledge.  He is passionate about making finance relevant, understandable and fun.  He enables people to develop their business acumen and to apply financial management practices that suit their organisation’s needs and circumstances. 

Kevin’s clients include: Ministry of Justice, Department of Internal Affairs, ANZ National Bank, Meridian Energy, Auckland District Health Board and Auckland City Council.   

Kevin’s approach is highly practical, using only the financial theory that people need to know, and then building skills and knowledge through case studies, examples and small group work.  He is able to provide “real life” advice based on his experience in CFO roles and his experience of managing major Capex projects, implementing financial systems, improving financial processes and procedures and achieving ongoing efficiency savings.   

Kevin’s passion, enthusiasm and commitment result in excellent feedback from participants at all levels: Directors, General Managers, Accountants, Senior Managers, Middle Managers, Supervisors and Support Staff.     

Kevin Lee is also facilitating:

• Budgeting and Cost Control for Non Financial Managers
• Cash Flow and Liquidity Management for improved performance
• Commercial Approaches for Government Agencies
• Effectively Managing & Organising Accounts Payable
• Effectively Managing and Organising Accounts Payable
• Essential Finance Skills for EAs, PAs & Administrators
• Finance & Accounting Skills for Managers in the Health Sector
• Financial Machinery of Government
• Managing Credit, Accounts Receivable and Debt Recovery
• Managing the Numbers: The Financial Skills for Non Financial Managers
• The Effective Accounts Assistant

In-house Training