Budgeting consumes a massive amount of time and resources. It's a stressful and busy time. Are there ways to improve the effectiveness of the investment we make in the budget process? Can we make better budgeting decisions that lead to higher performance?

There are options within and beyond traditional budgeting. Each company should consider these options and decide which could improve their budgeting process. Budgeting has many benefits that we can continue to capture and build upon.

In this course, I'll focus on the Master Budget and the budgets that comprise it. There's a method to the madness when different types of assumptions and calculations are layered into the budget. However, the process is not entirely sequential. It abounds with iterative loops.

This course is part of a three-part series I call Better Budgeting. The three parts are:

• The master budget and sub-budgets
• The budgeting process
• Budgeting alternatives

You can watch all three parts in the order above or watch any part as a stand-alone course. You can take the Better Budgeting course for all three parts in a single course.

The course author has been the CFO, SVP of Finance, or Director of Operations of companies with just a few employees to companies with $3 billion in assets and hundreds of employees. He's led, facilitated, or participated in the budgeting process many times.