Budgeting, Forecasting and Variance Analysis

A budget is a plan expressed in money, and it fails in the same ways plans fail. This programme covers construction, rolling reforecast and the discipline of variance analysis that identifies cause rather than restating the difference. Delegates work with their own cost structure throughout.

It runs 7 times over the published calendar, in 6 cities and live online. Every date is the same programme with the same content and the same certificate.

• Build a budget from drivers rather than from last year plus a percentage.
• Run a rolling forecast that updates on evidence.
• Analyse variance to cause rather than to category.
• Present financial performance to a non financial audience.

Budget holders, finance business partners and managers accountable for a cost centre or a profit centre.

Short input, then work. Across 5 days of roughly 6 teaching hours each, the balance sits deliberately with the second: a programme where the trainer talks for six hours produces notes rather than capability.

• Your own material

  Exercises run on situations delegates bring, not on a case study written for a different organisation in a different decade.

• A capped cohort

  Small enough that everybody is asked something. Executive programmes are capped tighter still.

• Practice under scrutiny

  The difficult conversation, the challenged assumption, the decision defended out loud. Judgement is not built by watching.

• Something to take back

  Each day ends with a thing you can use on Monday rather than a slide deck you will not reopen.

• A driver based budget model for the delegate's own area.
• A rolling forecast template with defined update triggers.
• A variance analysis worked through to root cause.
• A one page reporting format for a non financial audience.

A GATI certificate recording what you attended, issued after the programme has run and attendance has been taken. Attending at least 80 per cent of the days earns a certificate of completion; attending less earns a certificate of attendance stating exactly what was attended.

Every certificate carries a code that anybody can check against GATI's own record, which is what makes it worth holding. It records participation. This site will not imply one it does not have.