The Business Budgeting Process

Description

Budgeting consumes a massive amount of time and resources. It's a stressful and busy time.

Are there ways to improve the effectiveness of the investment we make in the budget process? Can we make better budgeting decisions that lead to higher performance?

In this course, I walk step-by-step through the budget formation process. The purpose and role of the budget can best be explained in the context of strategic planning. We'll explore which analyses can be done throughout the year to take pressure off the very busy budgeting season. Some lessons cover the nuts and bolts of budget reporting and budgeting tools.

This course focuses on:

• How top leadership sets the budget guidelines

• Whether budgets should be built in a top-down process

• The major steps in building and communicating with a budget

• Managing a company with a budget

• Budget reporting

• Budgeting tools

This course is part of a three-part series I call Better Budgeting. The three parts are:

• The master budget and sub-budgets

• The budgeting process

• Budgeting alternatives

You can watch all three parts in the order above or watch any part as a stand-alone course. This course does not cover how different parts of the budget are calculated (e.g., revenues, production costs, selling costs, administration costs). See my course "The Master Budget and Sub-Budgets" for that.  This course focuses on improving internal management processes around the budget to improve decision-making and company performance.

The course author has been the CFO, SVP of Finance, or Director of Operations of companies with just a few employees to companies with $3 billion in assets and hundreds of employees. He's led, facilitated, or participated in the budgeting process many times.

Who this course is for:

• Business employees tasked with building budgets.
• Business advisors who want to better help their clients build budgets.
• Business employees or owners who want to better understand how budgets are built.