jim.shamlin.com

Preparing for Presentation

The author gives the reader a vague sense that presentation is important - that it is possible to agonize over the details, getting a budget accurate and detailed, and get everything about the budget as "right" as possible, but still fail to get buy-in if it is nto presented well.

Combining the Parts

It is not uncommon for the individual parts of a budget to be built separately, even by different people. Ultimately, it will be considered as a whole, so it is suggested that a first step is to create a single table containing the whole budget. At this time, it's also a good idea to make sure all the parts add up when put together.

Revising Assumptions

In many cases, a budget is documented with a lot of working notes about interpretation and assumption. The people to whom a budget is presented generally have not been involved in the process, and they may not understand the notes. They must be rewritten for the aurience.

Key considerations are:

If the answers to one or more of these questions is "no," the note should be revised or removed from the budget that will be presented.

Formats

In most cases, there are predefined formats for budgets (in the sense of numerical displays of data). If there are no formal templates, refer to last year's version of the same budget, or another budget for a similar project. These formats should already be familiar to the audience - they not need to "learn" the format to understand the budget.

Account Codes

The accounting codes will not be necessary to anyone except accounting and to the project team when they are comparing actual expenses to budgeted amounts. For most audiences, they can and should be hidden or removed.

Preparing the Presentation

The goal of preparing a presentation is to make the budget understandable to the specific audience to whom it is being presented. Depending on the audience and their needs, the "presentation" may be the delivery of a document, a discussion, a formal presentation, or any combination of them.

The key, as in any presentation, is to consider the audience: their reason for wanting to see the budget, their level of familiarity and expertise, the concerns they can be anticipated to have, and the way in which they will react to the budget. This will dictate the level of detail they will need, the degree to which you must explain rather than merely show, and the general approach that should be taken.

Presentation Materials

As with budget formats, there should be predefined templates for presentations (documents, spreadsheets, slideshows, etc.) that can be leveraged to develop presentation materials

Random Tips

Pulling out some random tips from along the way:

EN: Just occurred to me ... To create a budget, one looks at real-world phenomena and translates it into dollars. To present a budget, one shows those dollars and translates them back into real-world phenomena.


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