Budgeting, Costing and Decision Making
Budgeting, Costing and Decision Making
OBJECTIVES
- Understand the importance of a well-defined budget process
- Learn costing and budgeting terminology used in business
- Master techniques for cost-benefit analysis
- Learn how to construct profit, cash and balance sheet plans and budgets
- Learn how to evaluate variances from plan and identify corrective actions
- Understand discounted cash flow (DCF) techniques and their application to financial decision making
- Use and build EXCEL spreadsheets for financial analysis, from basic models through to Monte Carlo simulation
WHO SHOULD ATTEND?
- Financial personnel who need to evaluate plans for approval and variance reports for corrective action and those who need to improve their skills in constructing and controlling a budget
- Anyone from non-financial discipline, needing to evaluate proposed business expenditure decisions and who need to know more about the budgeting process, plan, cost and budget during their business careers
COURSE OUTLINE
DAY 1 – The need for Financial Control in business
- Understanding accounting
- Management accounting versus financial accounting
- Cost behaviours in Cost-Volume-Profit scenarios
- Breakeven and targeted net income scenarios
- Business cases with master budgets
- Benefit-cost analysis
DAY 2 – Capital Costs and Investment Appraisal
- Estimating cash flows within the business system
- Understanding Net Present Value (NPV) and Internal Rate of Return (IRR)
- Defining the approval criteria and review process
- Post-implementation audits of capital projects
- Sensitivity analysis and uncertainty
- Monte Carlo simulation techniques in budgeting
DAY 3 – Cost Volume Profit Analysis
- Identifying relevant costs in complex decisions
- Complex applications of C-V-P analysis
- Multiple products and services C-V-P
- Evaluating C-V-P before and after implementation
- Special sales orders and/or segment analysis
- Make or buy decisions
DAY 4 – Full Costing, Marginal Costing and Activity Based Costing
- Comparing full and marginal costing
- Direct and indirect costs in budgeting for decision making
- Role of costs in pricing strategies
- Overhead allocation methods and difficulties
- Variance analysis of materials, labour, & overhead in manufacturing and services
- Activity Based Costing (ABC) in manufacturing and services
DAY 5 – Budget Construction and Control
- Budgeting as a communication process
- Nature and purpose of budgets for planning and control
- Budgetary control and variance analysis
- Responsibility centres: cost, profit and investment
- Segment reporting internally and externally