This course will cover the concepts of forecasting and budgeting from a finance perspective.

The course includes many example problems, both in presentation form, and many using Excel worksheets. Each Excel worksheet problem will include a downloadable Excel worksheet that has at least two tabs, one having the answer, the second including a preformatted worksheet that can be populated in a step-by-step process along with the instructional video.

To forecast and budget we need to make predictions and projections about the future. This is often done by first taking information from the past as our starting point. The starting point will generally be our prior financial statements, including our prior balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows.

We will then consider changes that we expect to take place, including those we plan on making and changes to the economy and business environment.

When constructing our budgets will need to go in a systematic order. We usually need to start with a sales projection because other projections will depend on it.

Our budget process can then consider the production plan. We can then move to the capital budget, cash budget, and budgeted income statement. The budgeted income statement is our primary performance statement.

Once we have the beginning balance sheet and the projected income statement, we can create the projected balance sheet, the statement representing where we expect to be at the end of the budgeted time frame.