About this course
Builds budgets from the activities that drive cost instead of from last year's figures plus an increment. Delegates identify activities and cost drivers, estimate workload volumes, calculate resource requirements and cost per activity, and link the resulting budget to service levels and strategic priorities. Activity-based budgeting is compared with incremental and zero-based approaches, and practical implementation issues are discussed.
Why this course
Incremental budgets carry past inefficiencies forward and give managers little basis for defending or cutting allocations. Activity-based budgeting shows what each output costs and what a change in volume or service level will mean for spending. For organisations under funding pressure, this supports better trade-off decisions and more credible budget submissions.
What delegates will be able to do
By the end of the course, delegates will be able to
- Identify the main activities and cost drivers in a department or process
- Calculate resource requirements and costs from forecast activity volumes
- Build an activity-based budget for a department in Excel
- Compare activity-based, incremental and zero-based budgeting and select a suitable approach
- Use activity costs to justify budget requests and model service-level changes
Who should attend
Budget officers, management accountants, finance business partners, planning staff and departmental managers who prepare or review budgets. Delegates should be familiar with their organisation's current budgeting process.
How it is delivered
Facilitator-led sessions around a case study organisation, with Excel exercises in which delegates build an activity-based budget step by step. It is available as a public course, in-house at your premises, or as live virtual sessions. Duration and dates are confirmed in your quote, and in-house groups can have the examples and exercises fitted to their organisation.