Planning and Preparing an Operating Budget

Overview/Description
Preparing and planning budgets involves a number of organizational activities, ranging from determining the organization's budgetary goals to approving its budgets over a specific period of time. Individual departments translate the organization's budgetary goals into departmental goals relevant to their area. Preparing operating budgets often starts with revenue forecasting, followed by various expenses budgets. Many forecasting tools are used for forecasting revenues and expenses. Knowing the various activities associated with preparing, reviewing, and having management's approval on operating budgets helps you with your own budgeting responsibilities in the organization. This course presents some of the key activities required for planning and preparing an operating budget. It discusses key characteristics of the budget manual and calendar. It also introduces some qualitative and quantitative methods and how they are used to prepare an operating budget. Finally, the course walks you through the stages in the review and approval of the budget.

Target Audience
Finance and nonfinance professionals, functional managers, executives, and all individuals involved directly or indirectly with budgetary planning and an organization’s control process

Expected Duration (hours)
1.0

Lesson Objectives

Planning and Preparing an Operating Budget

match the budget manual and the budget calendar to their characteristics

match qualitative forecasting methods to examples

use quantitative forecasting to prepare a sales budget in a given scenario

classify the components of an expenditure budget as fixed or variable costs

match each stage of the reviewing and approval process to examples