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Courses/Finance/Budgeting & Financial Forecasting

The Controllership Series: Budgeting in Uncertain Times

Master dynamic budgeting strategies to confidently navigate economic volatility. Learn to optimize resources and transform financial uncertainty into strategic control.

Created byLynn Fountain
BeginnerUpdated Mar 11, 2026
The Controllership Series: Budgeting in Uncertain Times

What You'll Learn

check_circleIdentify factors causing budget uncertainty.
check_circleCompare four common budgeting methodologies.
check_circleApply zero-based budgeting to control costs.
check_circleAlign budget approaches with company goals.
check_circleAdapt financial forecasts to market changes.

About This Course

With new accounting standards, the economic landscape, and evolving technology, accounting, financial reporting, and finance continue to grow in complexity. FASB has tried to address the growing complexity by working towards making GAAP less convoluted.

The struggle to stay on top of accounting, financial reporting requirements, and finance changes due to the economy continues for several reasons:

  • Lack of in-house SMEs.
  • Managing high volumes of transactions, data, and evolving information technology systems.
  • The challenge of navigating and applying accounting standards.

In the future, executives must consider the challenges they will face in future years that will bring their own nuances and complexities. Budgeting is certainly one of those processes that must be evaluated and re-evaluated for efficiency.

This session delves into the corporate budgeting process and discusses methods used and which methods may or may not allow for organizations to properly plan for a volatile future.

 Key learning outcomes include:

  • Evaluating budget uncertainty and implementing decentralized decision-making, stress testing, and continuous budget monitoring.
  • Understanding the mechanics of Incremental Budgeting, including its simplicity and its potential pitfalls such as budgetary slack and the perpetuation of operational inefficiencies.
  • Exploring Activity-Based Budgeting to align financial resources directly with operational outputs and short-term company targets.
  • Applying Value Proposition Budgeting to rigorously justify expenses based on the strategic value they deliver to the organization and its customers.
  • Mastering Zero-Based Budgeting through practical case studies, learning how to rebuild budgets from scratch, justify every expense, and prioritize decision packages for maximum cost containment.
  • Identifying the key factors for selecting the right budgeting method, negotiated budgeting, or a hybrid approach based on your company us unique goals, data availability, and market conditions.

Your Instructor

Lynn Fountain
Lynn Fountain
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star10,633 reviews

Lynn Fountain has over 45 years of experience spanning public accounting, corporate accounting and consulting. 24 years of her experience has been working in the areas of internal and external auditing. She is a subject matter expert in multiple fields including internal audit, ethics, fraud evaluations, Sarbanes-Oxley, enterprise risk management, governance, financial management and compliance. Ms. Fountain has held two Chief Audit Executive positions for international companies. In 2011, as the Chief Audit Executive for an international construction/ engineering firm, she was involved in the active investigation of a joint venture fraud. The investigation included work with the FBI and ultimately led to indictment of the perpetrators and recovery of $13M. Ms. Fountain is currently engaged in her own training and consulting business and is a regular trainer for the AICPA. Ms. Fountain is the author of three separate technical books. “Raise the Red Flag – The Internal Auditors Guide to Fraud Evaluations” was published by the Institute of Internal Auditors Research Foundation. -“Leading The Internal Audit Function” and -“Ethics and The Internal Auditor Political Dilemma” were published by Taylor & Francis In addition Ms. Fountain was a contributing author to the certification program exam for the National Association of Accountants. She also has certificate programs on various on-line platforms. Ms. Fountain has performed as an adjunct instructor for the School of Business for Grantham University and developed the first internal audit curriculum for the School of Business at the University of Kansas. Ms. Fountain obtained her BSBA from Pittsburg State University and her MBA from Washburn University in Kansas. She has her CGMA, CRMA credentials and CPA certificate (non-active).

Credit Information

Do these courses count toward my professional development requirements?

This portal is provided as a training and development resource for City of Markham employees. Every course is delivered by a qualified subject matter expert or learning organization, is quantifiable in hours, and is verifiable — you receive a documented certificate of completion for every course you finish, stored on LearnFormula indefinitely.

If you hold a professional designation (for example in engineering, accounting, human resources, or law), courses may be counted as professionally relevant, verifiable learning activities toward your continuing professional development. Individual practitioners are responsible for confirming that an activity meets the requirements of their professional body. For questions about the City of Markham's training and development policies, please speak with your people leader or Human Resources.

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