Budget and Financial Management

Complete Seminar Details

Class Length: 3 Days

Class Hours: 8:30 a.m.–5 p.m.

Learn How To

• Utilize ESI’s Mindset Model to understand how finance and accounting influence management decisions
• Ask the right questions to successfully create, present, monitor and manage a budget
• Persuasively negotiate for financial resources
• Communicate financial information and results to stakeholders, executives, colleagues and project teams
• Correlate budget success with its presentation in financial reports
• Recognize the relationships between primary financial statement line items by calculating and examining relevant financial ratios

Course Synopsis

In a global business environment, employees are increasingly tasked with responsibilities outside of their traditional job roles. Finance is the fastest growing area where senior managers are looking to department staff and leaders for insight, understanding and recommendations. Without understanding the fundamental links between budgets and finance, many struggle to show senior managers how their projects or departments contribute to the organization's bottom line. This course will help you understand the "macro" big picture and "micro" line item context and trends of finance—as well as the mechanics of developing budgets. It will give you the necessary tools to make sound financial decisions for your business unit. Whether your goal is to stay on budget, increase overall cost savings or meet specific profitability targets, real-world exercises will help you become familiar with standard financial documents, and use budget and estimating methods and tools more effectively. Specifically, you’ll review and discuss commonly used financial metrics to not only understand the numbers, but also to explore the not-so-obvious financial impacts of typical operating decisions and actions—from a project to organizational level.

After completing this course, you will know how to gather, compile and prioritize financial data to develop, execute and manage a budget. You will also be better able to communicate financial and budgetary information, have greater confidence in assessing finances, and participate more effectively in the business decision-making process.

Reminder: Participants who have taken Financial Considerations for Business Decision Making should not take Budget and Financial Management.

Course Topics

Strategic Focus and Drivers

• Identifying and examining strategy
• Business trends
• Mergers and acquisitions
• Aggressive asset management
• Outsourcing
• Legislative and regulatory scrutiny
• Balanced scorecard

Managing Stakeholder Expectations

• Identify and analyze stakeholders
• Getting buy-in

The Basics of Finance

• Financial basics
• Accounting
• Costs, profits and profitability
• Financial statements
• Balance sheets
• Income statements
• Cash flow statements

Budgeting Skills

• Budgeting basics
• Budget cycles
• Budgeting processes: planning, approving, managing and reporting
• Budget elements
• Gather and categorize
• Prioritize
• Develop initial estimates
• Compile and total estimates
• Perform tradeoffs
• Finalize initial budget for approval

Presenting a Budget for Approval

• Communicating budgets to decision makers
• Negotiating for resources

Managing and Reporting Budget and Financial Results

• Monitoring performance
• Variances
• Earned value technique
• Taking corrective action
• Budget reporting
• Closing out budgets
• Revenue recognition

Professional Development Units

PDUs: 22.5

ACE CREDIT recommendation:

Undergraduate: 2 credit hours

CPE Credit:

27

Sponsor Background:

As the demand for project management expertise increased, ESI began offering public courses.

To date, more than 250,000 students from 50 countries around the world have benefited from the courses. As a result, our Project Management Professional Development Program has achieved the distinction of being the world's most comprehensive education program for building project management knowledge and skills.

Discounts and Payment Policy

Receive 10 percent off your registration when you sign up for two or more classes or you register yourself and a friend for the same course at the same time. You must sign up for the courses at the same time and pay in advance. Course discounts do not apply toward The Project Advantage course, the PMP Exam Preparation course or any e-training course.

In case of a course cancellation, substitutions can be arranged. Double Deal discounts cannot be applied to any past classes and are not applicable to e-training courses, the PMP Exam Preparation course or The ProjectAdvantage.

Quote From Past Participants:

Past Participants Include:

• Abbott Labs
• Amoco Corporation
• AMTRAK
• Bank of America
• The Boeing Company
• Dell Computers
• FedEx
• The Gillette Company
• Hewlett-Packard
• IBM
• Oracle
• Shell Oil
• US Postal Service
• World Bank