Budget Preparation and Tracking

Budget officer, finance assistant, grant accountant, cost controller — I build the budget, then I prove where the money went.

You handle money for a project, a department or a small business, and you are asked for numbers you cannot yet defend line by line.

What you'll be able to do

• Build a costed, line-item budget from real activities and real unit prices
• Split direct costs, shared costs and contingency the way a funder expects
• Produce a monthly cash forecast and see a shortfall before it happens
• Track actuals against budget and calculate variance in amount and in percent
• Write a variance explanation and a budget revision a donor or a board accepts

How it's built

The structure comes from free open material — Saylor Academy managerial accounting, Open University finance units and the published budget formats of major donors. We add the SYSCOHADA account logic, mobile money reality and the donor budget templates actually used in Central and West Africa.

What you earn

• Free completion records from the open providers, in their own name
• An LES Institute certificate covering an assessed budget, cash forecast and variance report

Requirements

• Secondary school completion
• Comfortable with basic arithmetic and a spreadsheet
• A laptop, or centre access for the spreadsheet work
• Teaching in French or English, your choice