A 4-Day Intermediate plus-Level Workshop geared to transform budgeting into a value-added process by providing support for strategic planning, by streamlining reporting processes, by improving performance, and increasing your organisation’s donor attractiveness.

Benefits to Your Organisation

One of the key ingredients to creating value is having a system which aligns the budgeting process to organisational strategy, and the long-term project goals. Activity Based Budgeting replaces outdated historical-based budgeting systems. It is a technique adopted by major organisations to determine the true cost of activities, services, and processes, and measure these against the organisational budget. Activity based budgeting addresses the key issue of how, where and why costs are incurred, thereby aligning the goal and objectives of the project to the actual resources allocated to each activity and task on the ground.

Desired Project Outcomes

At the conclusion of this workshop, participants should have acquired a working knowledge of how to:

• Understand why budget development flows from a strategic plan
• Allocate programme-specific costs, common costs, and overhead costs
• Align specific project objectives with the resources allocated to each activity
• Be able to construct an activity based budget from an activity plan worksheet
• Apply Activity Based cost information for performance tracking
• Apply variance analysis to cost management

Workshop Overview:

• The project budget components
• Understanding accrual and cash accounting
• Practice developing an Activity-Based Budget
• Implementing a budgeting, forecasting and reporting process
• The treatment of inflation and exchange rate variances
• Microcredit- budgeting for sustainability
• Aligning your budget with the strategic plan: Balanced Scorecard Approach
• Practicing budgeting for sustainability with an exit strategy

Learning Features

The workshop methodology is to combine the use of interactive facilitation supported by participatory learning through case-studies, creative thinking exercises, group exercises and presentations by the participants. This is followed up by a complimentary three month period of expert tutor support by email for all participants.

Who Should Attend

Due to the hands-on nature, this workshop is best conducted with a maximum of 15 participants. It will benefit those involved in project management and budgeting in the NGO development sector, with a view to identifying management and process improvements in their organisations. Participants should have an intermediate background in accounting or finance. To obtain full benefit from hands-on participation in the exercises, participants should have access to a computer, or bring along their own laptop/notebook, and have a working knowledge of MS Excel. The sharing of computers of up to a 3:1 ratio is acceptable.

Training Fee for In-House Delivery

We would be pleased to provide our quotation, which would include::

• A limited, single-use programme copyright
• Facilitator’s delivery fees
• Printed material and CD-Rom’s for exercises
• Printed workshop notes.

Not included in the training fee are venue & equipment costs, meals & refreshments, transportation, and the trainer’s accommodation and international travel costs.