Understanding Costs and Budgets

The focus of this session is management accounting. It works through the nature and behaviour of costs as well as the impact of profit drivers on performance. It looks at the different approaches to budgeting and their appropriateness as well as the sources of information available to aid forecasting.

This course is suitable for non-financial managers and anyone new to managing costs and budgets. It looks at the base knowledge needed in order to compile and manage budgets and is therefore also useful for refreshing ideas, and formalising and filling in knowledge gaps.

By the end of this course you will be able to:

• Identify how budgets are put together in your organisation and your role in the process
• Describe how costs behave and the impact they have on your budget and performance
• Explain the impact of the different profit drivers and the influence you can have on the bottom line
• Define the different types of forecasting to utilise the best approach for your budget
• Use a structured process to prepare a budget, which can be used to monitor actual costs and take action to ensure the budget is met
• Describe the effect of prepayments and accruals and how they impact on budgets and cash flow
• Manage financial performance, by understanding variances and knowing what action can be taken
• Explain the need to budget for risk and how to defend budget contingencies to reduce the impact on the business

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