Financial Forecasting and Modeling

Financial modeling and forecasting can improve your business decision-making by helping you determine how best to allocate business resources to address expected expenditures in the coming months and years. The best tool to create a financial model is a widely familiar application such as Microsoft Excel or another popular data analysis tool.

You may be wondering who uses financial forecasting, how the forecasts are used, or if such forecasts are even reliable. We answer these questions during this course. We will use a fictional company as an example to build our financial model and forecast. Having a basic understanding of Excel and a general familiarity with accounting principles is helpful.

The course includes instructor files and exercise files so you can follow along and practice what you’ve learned.

In this course, you will learn:

• The basics of financial modeling and forecasting
• The purpose of financial forecasting
• How to build a sound financial model
• The role of forecasting in strategic planning
• How to go through the three financial statements (balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statement)
• How to define your forecasting objectives
• Identifying key variables and drivers
• Analyzing financial forecasts using ratio analysis
• Future trends in forecasting.