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Planning, Forecasting & Budgeting are 3 of the most important functions in business. Performed properly they can lead to exceptional success. Yet many people do not use the tools available to them to their best advantage. In this course we will leverage the power of Excel to demonstrate how to improve your forecasting, planning and budgeting. By developing better spreadsheets & models, planning is more accurate, forecasting is more precise & budgeting is more attainable. And the time to develop these is dramatically reduced. Forecasts, plans and budgets may be improved through extensive what-if analysis to find key factors for management to monitor. Moreover, these tools can be easily transferred into business plans which provide the guide to the overall performance of the organization.

By the end of this course, delegates will be able to:

· Understand the various Excel tools available to perform planning, forecasting & budgeting

· Perform sophisticated what-if scenarios to improve decision making

· Know what Excel techniques to use in a given situation

· Properly use some of the most advanced spreadsheet techniques

· Know when to take a chance & when not to

· Learn to use & expand a range of Excel models (provided)

· Be able to develop advanced decision support models

· Have an increased productivity of personnel involved in planning, forecasting & budgeting

· Develop an improved performance of plans developed into budgets

· Learn better ways to plan & measure results of forecasts

· Realize better options when facing forecasting choices

· Have better integration between functional areas leading to better decisions

· Develop an improved understanding of how well prepared Excel models benefit the corporate

· Understanding the risks & rewards of various planning decisions

· Be able to calculate the impact of alternative inputs on critical outputs

· Understand cost/benefit of every decision

· Enhance knowledge with the use of the models in the case studies

· Significantly increase Excel analysis skills

Network system administrators network engineers, IT personnel, directors & managers, company advisors, corporate finance officers & strategic planners, accounting personnel & corporate officers, commercial and investment bankers, securities analysts, asset managers & forecasts plans or budgets personnel, personnel who develop departmental business advisors and analysts who need to advise or comment on business forecasts plans and budgets.

Introduction to Spread Sheets Using Excel

· Worksheet fundamentals

· Using the F4 key for Relative & Absolute cell references

· Expose ALL formulas in a worksheet using the built in function for faster review

· Naming cells & ranges for quicker, more accurate work

· Freeze panes, columns & rows for easier viewing while scrolling

· Protecting cells & ranges to stabilize models

· Function wizard benefits

· Linking cells from various worksheets to reduce errors

· Secret key board shortcuts

· Create, build & protect a reusable template

Proper Planning

· Introduction to planning

· What-if analysis

· Economic Order Quantity (EOQ)

· Build out Data tables to see an entire range of options

· Maximizing vs. optimizing techniques

· Utilizing The Goal Seek command to calculate a reverse equation

· Using Solver to calculate optimal product mix, distribution problems & capital budgeting

· Case study & template for using Solver to plan the Optimal product mix

Fantastic Forecasting

· What is forecasting?

· Qualitative techniques & their uses

· Quantitative techniques & their uses

· Forecasting growth rates for verification

· MIN and MAX functions

· MEDIAN, MODE & AVERAGE functions

· GEOMEAN to calculate Average Growth Rate (AGR)

· When to use RANK, QUARTILE & PERCENTILE

· Use the GEOMEAN function to calculate your AGR

Beyond Budgeting

· What is a budget?

· How to build a simple budget

· Build a Flexible Budget Model

· Build out a complete budget

· What is the Variance Analysis report & why is it important to improve your budget

· Calculating variance analysis to see what must be changed

· Build a complete budget

Building the Comprehensive Model

· Build your planning model

· Build your forecasting model

· Build your budgeting model

· Link these together

· Leverage optimization through capital structure