ACPEN: Predictive Accounting – Driver-Based Budgeting and Rolling Financial Forecasts

Overview

Traditional annual budgeting is often viewed as outdated, inflexible, and disconnected from strategy—quickly becoming irrelevant, easily manipulated, and too cumbersome to support real decision-making. This course introduces capacity-sensitive, driver-based budgeting as a modern alternative. By linking financial projections to business drivers, organizations can create agile budgets that adapt to growth, enable rapid scenario planning, and provide meaningful insights for long-term forecasting. Participants will learn how to refresh budgets into rolling forecasts and transform managerial accounting into a tool for strategic, economics-based decision-making.

Highlights

• The shift to “predictive accounting” for Decision Making, Planning, and Budgeting
• Problems with traditional annual budget processes
• Develop a driver-based “operational budget” based on resource capacity planning
• Classify resource capacities and their expenses as sunk, fixed, step-variable, and variable
• Create closed loop capacity plans
• Forecast demand for budgeting and rolling financial forecasts
• Integrating enterprise risk management (ERM) with management accounting
• Applying target costing for cost estimating

Prerequisites

Some budgeting experience is helpful

Designed For

CFOs, Controllers and other corporate financial professionals

Objectives

• Understand how to create driver-based budgets and rolling financial forecasts

Preparation

None