The Essentials of Budgeting & Cost Control

Budgeting and Cost Control are indispensable for modern organizations. This Anderson training course equips participants with essential skills in Budgeting & Cost Control, vital internal tools for planning, monitoring activities, and sustaining performance. Budgets play a crucial role in both strategy formulation and execution, relying heavily on effective Cost Control and accurate analysis of financial data. Understanding cost behavior is pivotal for generating realistic plans and ensuring adequate allocation of financial and non-financial resources to support business objectives.

Participants in this Anderson training course will gain proficiency in traditional budgeting and control methods, alongside innovative approaches that adapt to today's intricate business landscape.

By attending this Anderson training course, delegates will be able to:

• Master the essential component of costing and budgeting
• Understand fixed and variable costs, direct and indirect, OPEX and CAPEX
• Link innovative approaches to cost savings
• Improve capital budgeting
• Measure and Manage the performances that matters

This Anderson training course is suitable to a wide range of professionals but will greatly benefit those with direct or indirect budget responsibilities within a Team, Department or Division. Moreover, the course is suitable to first appointment professionals on fast-track development programs, and to professionals from every business discipline and department who have to run budgetary plans, and who are responsible for cost and strategic analysis, including:

• Financial Planning & Control Staff
• Those with direct or indirect financial responsibilities
• Those from every business discipline and department who have to run departments and budgetary plans, and who are responsible for cost and strategic analysis
• Those from all sectors of industry, irrespective of functional responsibilities, but particularly those involved in manufacturing, production, engineering or sales
• Those working in a project management environment

• Budget target-setting, participation and control
• Strategic planning, budgeting and management control systems
• Key elements of planning: setting objectives, and responsibility accounting
• The role of financial control, and management accounting concepts
• Advantages and disadvantages of budgeting
• Budgeting within your organisation

• The essential stages of the budgeting process
• Types of budgets, incremental and zero-based budgeting
• Budget preparation: operating budgets and cash budgets
• Variable costs and fixed costs
• Contribution and marginal costing
• Decision-making using marginal costing, and cost/volume/profit (CVP) analysis

• Costs and activities
• Direct costs and indirect costs, product costs and period costs
• Cost allocation and absorption costing
• Product cost cross-subsidisation, and activity-based costing (ABC)
• Activity based budgeting (ABB)
• Budgetary control: standard costs, flexed budgets and variance analysis

• Capital investment costs and operating costs
• Accounting rate of return (ARR) and payback
• Discounted cash flow (DCF), and net present value (NPV)
• Cost of equity, cost of debt, and the weighted average cost of capital (WACC)
• Internal and modified internal rate of return (IRR/MIRR), and discounted payback
• Capital rationing, budgeting and the profitability index (PI)

• Planning for world class performance
• Drivers of corporate and shareholder value, and financial strategy
• The changing cost base and alternative approaches to costing
• The conflicts between accounting and business performance measurement
• Integrating financial and non-financial key performance indicators (KPIs)
• The balanced scorecard

Anderson Certificate of Completion will be provided to delegates who attend and complete the course