Video-Enhanced On-Line Planning, Costing and Budgeting for Executive Decision-Making

Course Contents, Concepts and Issues:

The Need for Financial Control in Business

• Understanding accounting and accounting process
• Management account versus financial accounting and financial management
• Cost behaviours in Cost-Volume-Profit scenarios
• Breakeven technique and targeted net income scenarios
• Business cases with master budgets
• Benefit-cost analysis

Capital Costs and Investment Appraisal

• Understanding the concept of time value of money
• Estimating cash flows within the business system
• Understanding Pay Back period, Accounting Return of Return, Net Present Value (NPV) and Internal Rate of Return (IRR)
• Defining the approval criteria and review process
• Post-implementation audits of capital projects
• Sensitivity analysis and uncertainty
• Monte Carlo simulation techniques in budgeting

Cost Volume Profit Analysis

• Identifying relevant and irrelevant costs in complex decisions
• Complex applications of C-V-P analysis
• Multiple products and services C-V-P
• Evaluating C-V-P before and after implementation
• Special sales orders and/or segment analysis
• Make or buy decisions

Full Costing, Marginal Costing and Activity Based Costing

• Understanding full and marginal costing, a comparison
• Understanding cost bahaviour, Direct and indirect costs in budgeting for decision making
• Role of costs in pricing strategies
• Overhead analysis and overhead allocation methods and difficulties
• Performance evaluation and variance analysis of materials, labour, & overhead in manufacturing and services
• Understanding advanced costing techniques such as Activity Based Costing (ABC) in manufacturing and services

Budget Construction and Control

• Budgeting as part of planning process and as a communication process
• Nature and purpose of budgets for planning and control
• Budgetary control and variance analysis
• Responsibility centres: cost, profit and investment
• Segment reporting internally and externally
• An introduction to Activity based budgeting
• An introduction to Zero based budgeting