B6: Advanced Budgeting & Forecasting (2-5 days)

In-Person and Virtual Classroom(in-house only) - Live, instructor-led, interactive training

All of our courses are available for In-house Training. We can also run training virtually. We provide live, instructor-led, interactive courses and our world-class instructors guide you through every step. Our Course Facilitators have over 20 years' experience in delivering training for clients all over the world. A number of Public Courses are scheduled for Perth. Face-to-Face interstate and international training is back in full swing but can still be delivered using online platforms.

Learn how to build sophisticated budgets and forecasts that are robust, flexible and user-friendly

Expert Facilitators | Customise and run this course In-House | Course Enquiry

Our Public courses are aimed at smaller groups of 3 – 8 people so that there is more opportunity for the instructor to assist on a 1-1 basis and discuss the attendee’s specific real-world scenarios.

NOTE:  For Public Courses a minimum of 3 attendees must have signed up 4 weeks in advance of the course otherwise the course will be postponed, and full refunds offered. The 3^rd day option also requires a minimum of 3 attendees to proceed

 

	Register your interest and we’ll let you know about future courses
	Run this course in-house at your company

 

Pre-requisites

Although not mandatory, attendees will get a lot more out this course if they complete some online training in Excel functions before attending. We have partnered with Excel University to provide high-quality, low-cost online training and recommend their Volume 2 Course as good preparation for this course.  If attendees are a little less familiar with Excel, Volume 1 would also very useful.

What you get from this course

• Discover a range of techniques to improve the usability and reliability of your budget and forecast models
• Learn how to integrate budgeting and forecasting and align these processes with your business strategy
• Create forecasts that properly incorporate imprecise data and allow for uncertainties
• Gain the confidence that comes from knowing that your budgets and forecasts are robust, accurate, and reliable

Examine and learn the following: 

• The need for change: global forces driving companies to update their budgeting and forecasting processes
• How to allow for uncertainty
• Most applicable types of budgets/ forecasts for each area of the business
• How to improve the reliability of forecasts whilst also decreasing the time taken to prepare these
• Alternate budget methodologies and how to determine which methodology applies best in different situations
• How to optimise budgets & forecasts to achieve maximum efficiency within given constraints.

Key learning outcomes

• Understand the role of budgeting and forecasting within the enterprise.
• Learn how to integrate budgeting and forecasting and align these with your business strategy.
• Learn how to handle uncertainty within budget models.
• Learn how your organisation can become more agile and produce more accurate forecasts faster.
• Understand how and when to go beyond Excel for budgeting and forecasting solutions, and understand the enterprise-level technologies that can enable this to occur.

Objectives 

• To provide an introduction to Budgeting and Forecasting framework within the enterprise.
• To provide an understanding of the budgeting and forecasting best practices that are being used in today’s companies.
• To enable accountants and analysts to build better, more flexible budget and forecast models.

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Agenda Highlights

Recent events have caused many companies to re-examine the budgeting and forecasting models they use in their decision making processes to ensure they are up-to-date and incorporate the latest in budgeting and forecasting best practices.

Furthermore, many organisations see the current economic situation as an opportunity to expand their businesses by taking advantage of weaker competitors. To support all these decisions, sound budgeting and forecasting are essential.

This course provides delegates with an understanding of both the principles of budgeting and forecasting and the practical application of these to real-world situations through the use of Excel.

The course then builds upon the principles and practices learned to apply these to build sophisticated budgets and forecasts that are robust, flexible and user-friendly.

Budgeting & Forecasting Theory

Budgeting & Forecasting and Strategic Planning

• Overview of strategic planning
• How budgeting and forecasting links with strategic planning
• Levels of planning, budgeting and forecasting

Driver-based Budgeting & Forecasting

• The 4 primary types of cost and revenue drivers in organisations
• The 4 perspectives essential for considering driver-based budgeting
• The 3 key areas to be considered when formulating drivers

Activities

Group discussions

Budgeting and Forecasting Challenges

• The 6 key challenges with budgeting and forecasting
• The 6 limitations of budgets and forecasts
• The Forecasting Conundrum
• Dealing with high uncertainty in budgets and forecasts
• Gaming and politics in budget negotiations
• Ways that assist in overcoming budgeting and forecasting shortcomings

Activities

Group discussions & activities

Budgeting & Forecasting Techniques

• The 3 primary types of budget approaches
• The purpose, advantages, disadvantages and implementation of rolling forecasts
• The difference between forecasting and targets and the role of each

Activities

Individual exercise in rolling budgets

Budgeting and Forecasting in Medium/Large Organisations

• Typical budgeting and forecasting processes
• Architecture for budgeting and forecasting models using Excel or specialised software systems
• Approaches for common budgeting and forecasting tasks:
  • Connecting to data sources and importing data
  • Consolidating multiple data files
  • Variance analysis
  • Scenarios and sensitivities
  • Breakeven analysis

Key Tools for Building Budgets and Forecasts

PowerQuery and PowerPivot (built into Excel 2016+) provide amazing functionality for creating and maintaining budgets and forecasts.

To try and produce a budget or forecast in Excel without using these tools would be far more difficult and time-consuming.

As such, the remainder of the course is focused on real-world techniques that utilise the amazing capabilities of PowerQuery, PowerPivot and Power BI to build and present a budget or forecast model.

We will focus on using PowerQuery and PowerPivot in Excel however the same tools and techniques can be easily applied to Power BI Desktop as well with only minor adjustments.

Introduction to PowerQuery

• Techniques for cleaning up messy data e.g. data from a customer/supplier/partner
• How to transform data from one format to another
• How to integrate data sources that have different time scales and different formats e.g. daily transactions integrated with a monthly budget
• How to merge multiple queries together e.g. data from different accounting systems or charts of accounts
• How to read multiple files from a folder and easily combine them together e.g. data outputs from other systems or daily/weekly transaction files
• How to use mapping tables to translate codes to readable names, or allow grouping of accounts/customers/products to create hierarchies that allow different views of your budget e.g. by country, state, or city; or by product group, product class and individual product etc.

Introduction to PowerPivot

• What is PowerPivot and how does it work?
• Key concepts for understanding and power of PowerPivot and Excel’s data model
• How to apply this to budgets and forecasts
• Introduction to writing formulas in DAX to create calculated columns and measures e.g. for the current year budget, reforecast figures, year-to-date numbers, comparison to last year/month, % or $ variance between actual and budget, reporting actual & forecast in one report etc.
• Comparing PowerPivot techniques to Excel: what’s the same and what’s different?

Putting it all Together

• Creating reports and charts with drill-down functionality that allow users to quickly find the information they’re looking for
• Creating dashboards where every element on the page is controlled by one click
• Transferring your budget/forecast model into Power BI Desktop and using this to present your results in a very graphical, intuitive way

The End Result

Participants will apply their knowledge to create a very flexible, powerful budget/forecast that incorporates the following features:

• • Import actuals from an accounting system up to whatever month is available
  • Import budget data from templates that have been completed by different departments
  • Combine actuals with budget/forecast data to produce:
    • $ and % variance to budget reports, automatically highlighting significant variances
    • Full-year forecasts with actuals to a point then budget or forecast numbers for future months
    • Comparison to last year and last month to identify trends
    • Charts and dashboards of the results

• Ability to view and analyse budget vs actual results at different levels of consolidation:
  • Day, month, quarter, year
  • By country, area and individual project
  • By company, department, and cost centre

How to build-in sensitivity analysis so that key budget inputs can be adjusted graphically and results viewed in real-time.

The model created is flexible and can be adapted to suit almost any organisation.

Introduction to Budgeting/Forecasting Systems

• Compare and contrast to an Excel-based budgeting/forecasting system

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Software Required

Excel 2016+ or Office 365 is required for this course.

Note: PowerQuery and PowerPivot are only available on the Windows versions of Excel.  Currently, they are NOT AVAILABLE on any Mac version.

Power BI Desktop: please also download and install the free Microsoft Power BI Desktop software.  This is not available for Macs either.

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Who should attend?

• Budget Analysts
• Cost Analysts
• Business Analysts
• Financial Analysts
• Finance Managers
• Business Planning & Forecasting Staff
• Management Accountants
• Business Analysts
• CFO’s
• Financial Modellers
• Finance Professionals
• Accountants

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Facilitator: Jeff Robson

Masters (Applied Finance), B.Com (Accounting & Information Systems), FAIM, F Fin, GAICD, CISA, Excel Expert| LinkedIn | Jeff is the founding Director and Principal Business Analyst at Access Analytic Solutions. He has over 20 years’ experience in chartered accounting, business management and consulting. Jeff holds a Masters in Applied Finance and is a Certified Information Systems Auditor. He is highly regarded and recognised around the world as an expert in the field of financial modelling and Power BI reporting. His achievements have been recognised by his peers and he is a Fellow of both the Financial Services Institute of Australasia and the Australian Institute of Management. Jeff has extensive experience in best practice management reporting, data analytics, business analysis, and financial modelling and is also an entertaining international presenter and trainer on these subjects. Jeff is the author of a number of white papers on financial modelling on subjects such as Financial Modelling Best Practices and Financial Model Auditing. He provides training for companies throughout Australia, New Zealand, Asia, South Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa.

Recent Speaking Engagements

The following are a sample of Jeff’s recent speaking engagements:

• Hong Kong: 4 day Financial Modelling workshop for Banking & Finance professionals
• Hong Kong: 3 day Advanced Company Valuation workshop for Banking & Finance professionals
• Kuala Lumpur: 2 day Advanced Budgeting & Forecasting Course
• Hanoi: 4 days of training in Advanced Budgeting & Forecasting for large Oil & Gas Company
• Johannesburg: 2 day Advanced Financial Modelling workshop
• Kuala Lumpur: 4 day workshop on Advanced Financial Modelling for Oil & Gas Companies
• Perth: 5 day workshop on Excel for Financial Modelling, and Financial Modelling Fundamentals for State Government Dept
• Perth: 4 day Advanced Financial Modelling workshop for major Oil & Gas Company
• Kuala Lumpur: 2 day Advanced Financial Modelling workshop
• Perth: 5 day workshop on Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT) and Advanced Financial Modelling for Oil & Gas Companies
• Perth: 2 day VBA Fundamentals course for Mining Services Company
• Perth: “Business Performance Reporting on a Shoestring” joint presentation with Microsoft at the CPA Congress to over 150 attendees
• Perth: “Power up your reports with Excel 2007” 3-hour presentation at CPA Congress to over 150 attendees
• Singapore: 4 day workshop on Advanced Excel and Advanced Financial Modelling for multinational logistics company
• Tehran, Iran: 3 day Advanced Financial Modelling for Oil & Gas Companies
• Dubai: 3 day workshop on Advanced Financial Modelling and company valuation
• Kish, Iran: 5 day workshop on Advanced Budgeting and Forecasting for Oil & Gas companies
• Johannesburg: 4 day workshop on Advanced Financial Modelling

 

Facilitator: Yury Tokarev

PhD, Chartered Accountant, Bachelor of Business (Finance and Economics), Microsoft Certified Excel Expert (MCEE) | LinkedIn | Yury is a Director and an International Training Specialist at Access Analytic Solutions. He has over 25 years of experience in corporate finance, chartered accounting, and consulting. Prior to his current role he worked in Business Services and Advisory at WHK Chartered Accountants and Corporate Finance at one of the top European Investment Banks. Yury has wealth of experience having delivered hundreds of Financial Modelling, Power BI and Excel solutions to clients ranging from start-ups to multi-billion corporations, including Chevron, Woodside, Northern Star Resources, Quadrant Energy, TransAlta and many more. Yury is also an international trainer on these subjects, and provides training for companies throughout Australia, Asia, the Middle East, South Pacific and South America.

 

Facilitator: Wyn Hopkins

Excel MVP, B.Sc. (Hons) Accounting & Financial Management | LinkedIn | Wyn qualified as a Chartered Accountant with PricewaterhouseCoopers in the UK in 2000, before working as an analyst for the FTSE 100 companies HBOS and Barclays. Microsoft awarded him the status of  Most Valuable Professional for the 7th year running in 2023. This recognises his expertise and willingness to share his knowledge via blogs, articles, community events and YouTube videos. The Access Analytic YouTube channel now has over 85, 000 subscribers. Wyn is an experienced Trainer and Excel / Power BI Developer. Since joining Access Analytic in 2007, he has delivered hundreds of amazing solutions for clients including many for Chevron and other leading organisations in Perth.

Feedback from Previous Participants

Feedback	Initials & Position
“Excellent course for learning budgeting and forecasting. I will apply this to my work on Monday!”	B.L., Budget Analyst, Phillip Morris
“I feel very confident with budgeting now. Thanks!”	Z.M., Analyst, Islamic Bank
“Very useful. I learned many new things that will make me more efficient in budgeting.”	A.R., Management Accountant, Manufacturing
“There were so many things I can use and apply! Many many thanks!”	A.Z., Senior Analyst, Corporate Finance

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Benefits & Inclusions

	Practical: Highly experienced facilitators who actively and regularly consult to clients also.
	Applicable: apply what you learn to your job to further your career.
	Hands-on: the course is designed to provide maximum hands-on experience.
	Passionate: Our facilitators love this subject!
	Clear: we specialise in translating complex subjects into concepts that are easy to understand.
	On-going help: you can always e-mail the facilitator.
	Comprehensive course notes.
	Networking: meet industry peers and hear how they approach this subject.
	Certificate of completion.
	… and much more!

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Clients who have 3-4 or more people interested in this course normally prefer to run this course on an in-house basis in their offices.

We can bring all the equipment for up to 8 people so all you need is a room!

Benefits

In-House Details & Pricing

In-house Course Fees

Call us on +61 8 6210 8500 to discuss your requirements.

Notes:
– We are happy to customise our courses to suit your requirements
– A 10% discount applies when booking 10+ full days of training in any 30 day period
– Many courses can also be split into half-days (please enquire)
– Fees for locations outside of Perth do not include equipment

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