Budgeting and Forecasting

Learning Objectives

• To discuss key factors in making revenue budgets
• To recall planning resources for business
• To plan marketing activities for business
• To construct future forecasts and business plans

Course Description

Budgeting and forecasting are very important aspects of business planning.

Budgets are the vehicle for allocating resources and measuring the success of selected strategies. An organization’s strategy is the primary driver of costs. To be effective, the budget must be linked to strategy and long-term plans. Numerous organizations have achieved a series of short-term targets (budgets) but failed longer term; demonstrating the lack of this necessary linkage. Forecasting, a critical part of any successful budgeting process, can be flawed by technical errors and/or structure/emotional forces. The establishment of a system to collect, process, and analyze Big Data can provide significant insights into the budgeting and forecasting process.

Good budgets effectively allocate resources and provide information for decision-making and an early warning system for unforeseen events. A poor budgeting process provides a false sense of security, inappropriate or inaccurate data, and re-enforces the status quo.

If budgeting and forecasting are done right, it can help you understand and plan,

• Where to get revenue from?
• What sort of resources do you need in business?
• When do you need to get the resources?
• What marketing activities you would need?

We have included a practical example from our live class to demonstrate the process of business planning. The business is a start-up business however it will help you understand Concepts of how to prepare a budget from the bottom-up approach for any business. In this Webinar, we will explore practical aspects of budgeting and forecasting.

Key Topics Covered:

• How to make operational & financial budgets and forecast your business
• Why budgeting & forecasting
• Operational & financial budget
• Process of budgeting (suggestive only)
• Pre-requirements
• Budget/forecast components
• Process of budget and forecasting
• Revenue budgeting – basis
• Estimating grand P&L and setting up budget limits
• Cost/expense budget
• Capital expenditure budget
• Marketing budget

Overview

• Paper exercise or something useful?

  10 mins
• Type of Budgets & Forecasts

  18 mins
• Approaches to make budget

  31 mins
• Process of budget and forecasting

  48 mins
• Revenue budget

  68 mins
• Other expenses budgeting

  89 mins