Zero-Based Budgeting: Decision Packages, Ranking & Cost Baselines
Analyse a cost baseline, rebuild costs from drivers, turn department plans into minimum, current and enhanced decision packages, rank them by benefit-to-cost, draw the funding line at a budget cap, measure savings against the baseline and the incremental budget and track the result in a dashboard: 8 labs on one fictional distributor (educational).
The first lesson is free — no account needed.
About this course
A zero-based budgeting course that rebuilds one fictional food distributor's cost budget from zero in a spreadsheet, for FP&A analysts, controllers, finance managers and business students. You analyse last year's cost baseline as a percentage of revenue, turn activity costs into unit costs and rebuild next year from volumes and benchmark unit costs, split each department's plan into minimum, current and enhanced decision packages with their benefit-to-cost ratios, rank twelve increments with RANK and a cumulative cost without sorting, draw the funding line at a USD 8.6 m cap, total each department's ZBB budget and its savings against the baseline with SUMIFS, compare it side by side with an incremental budget of baseline plus 4% net of the cost of running ZBB and track six months of budget vs actual in a dashboard. Illustrative numbers, educational only. The first lab is free.
Lessons
- The Cost Baseline: Last Year's Actuals by CategoryFree
- Cost Drivers and Unit Costs: Rebuilding Costs from Activity Pro
- Decision Packages: Minimum, Current and Enhanced Levels Pro
- Ranking Packages by Benefit-to-Cost with RANK and Cumulative Cost Pro
- The Funding Line: Cut-Off at the Budget Cap Pro
- Savings vs Baseline by Department with SUMIFS Pro
- Incremental vs Zero-Based Budget: The Side-by-Side Comparison Pro
- ZBB Tracking Dashboard: Budget vs Actual and Savings Captured Pro