Budgeting Advantages/Disadvantages

If the estimations in a budgeting process are poor, the organisation and the customers may suffer.

Budgets involve and affect the employees and the members of the deciding board, they may cause conflict. There may be difficult opinions on how limited funds are spent. Some departments e.g. production with tight budgets could feel self-conscious. This means decision will be slowed down and this can also slow down the production rate and this means ASDA would not be able to male as much in the given

This research paper is a brief discussion of budget management analysis. Budgeting is the key to financial management, and is the key to translates an organization goals or plan into money. Budgeting is a rough estimate of how much a company will need to get their work done, and provides the basis for evaluating performance, a source of motivation, coordinating business activities, a tool for management communication and instructions to employees. Without a budget an organization would be like a driver, driving blinded without instructions or any sense of direction, that’s how important a budget is to every organization and individual likewise (Clark, 2005).

Budgeting systems turn managers’ perspectives forward and by looking to the future and planning, managers are able to anticipate and correct potential problems before they arise (Horngren, Foster & Datar, 2000). Through budgeting, management can plan ahead and maintain enough cash to pay creditors, to have adequate raw materials to meet production requirements, and to have sufficient finished goods to meet expected sales (Kieso, 2002).

A company's budget serves as a guideline in planning and committing costs in order to meet tactical and strategic goals. Tactical goals such as providing budgetary costs for daily operations, and strategic objectives that include R&D, production, marketing, and distribution are all part of the budgeting process. Serving as a guideline rather than being set in stone, the budget is a snapshot of manager's "best thinking at the time it is prepared." (Marshall, 2003, p.496) The budget is a method in which to reign-in discretionary spending, and will likely show variances between what costs have been anticipated and what costs are actually incurred.

The central challenge that budget developers encounter is predicting what the future holds for the internal business and external factors. Reading the future is something that can never be done with perfect precision. The fast pace of technological change, the complexities of global competition and world events make developing effective budgets both more difficult and more important.

Another advantage is control and evaluation. It helps to think about how to correct company’s problems, if they have them. Motivation is another important advantage. Budget can motivate to reach the goals. It also can force managers to think and plan for the future. Budgeting helps to ensure that everyone in the organisation is pulling in the same direction. The budgeting process provides a means of allocating resources to those parts of the organisation where they can be used most effectively.

Budget formulation and use are tools that guide many decision making strategies in business. The measures that are least effective could create an avalanche of catastrophic events that can negatively impact the decision making strategies. It is in the best interest of the pertinent parties to draft an operating budget based on a collective set of information relating to organizational vision and mission. Ineffective measures can be catastrophic based on the foundation for measures used in creating the budget. Among the many issues organizations face that relates to creating an effective operating budget results from poor

Budget is time-consuming, especially if it involves a poorly managed company. The budget only pays attention to the quantitative aspect of business while neglecting the qualitative aspects. It does not consider the quality of services or goods and therefore inconsiderate of customers’ satisfaction. Another disadvantage of a budget is that it is inaccurate. A firm rarely “makes budget.” The hope is that the business activity will be close to the budget, but it could be off considerably and lead to bad hiring, spending and production decisions. This is because budget preparation is based on assumptions and thereby changes in the business environment could lead to unachievable

Budgetary control is part of overall organisation control and is concerned primarily with the control of performance. The use of budgetary control in performance management has of late taken on greater importance especially as a more integrative control mechanism for the organisation. Discuss.

Budgeting is a key contributing factor in the measure of performance for a company. If companies setup budgets for each of their departments or organization as a whole and fail to remain within these budgets it could mean losses of profit for the company and their shareholders. Over time, companies have learned that some outside forces cannot be controlled and failing to neither plan nor have a course of action for when these events happen, has driven companies into a hole. Eventually as companies started to notice how certain events influenced their overall performance from a financial budget point of view they developed tolerances or ranges for budgets to measure performance better, this began the idea of flexible budgeting. Budgeting is a direct indictor of performance and while it has evolved there is still need to practice annual and flexible budgeting to truly measure performance, while also taking it a step further to provide organizations with more precise information that flexible budgeting may not provide.

3. Budgets are prepared for the future period which is always uncertain. In future, conditions may change which will upset the budgets. Thus, future uncertainties minimize the utility of budgetary control system.

Budget and budgetary control practices are undeniably indispensable as organizations routinely go about their business activities and operations. These organizations are constantly on the alert on how actual levels of performance agree with planned or budgeted performance. A budget expresses a plan in monetary terms. It is prepared and approved prior to a particular budgeted period and explicitly may show the income, expenditure and the capital to be employed by organizations in achieving their goals and objectives.

Many businesses expect employees to achieve budget targets as part of their overall performance. While the specifics requirements of each employee differ with the position and nature of the company, it is common for employees to be expected to sell a certain number of items, control costs versus a budgeted amount or reduce waste compared with a benchmark. A potential downfall of using budget information for performance evaluation is that employees may be so concerned with making budget targets that they may do so at the cost of other parts of the business.

A very first advantages of traditional budgeting is it provides a framework of control and planning (Réka, Ştefan & Daniel, n.d.). The main role of traditional budgeting is to coordinate company daily financial activities, it provides a prior overall picture to company on spending or expenses. Traditional budgeting acts as a reference point for company to follow. It is also supported by Horngren(2012) saying that, traditional budget acts as a quantitative expression of a proposed plan of action whereby date and tasks will be specified to complete a plan. A research paper conducted by Hanninen (2013) concluded that traditional budgeting acts as a powerful tool for management controls. By reviewing the budget, it grants the right to top management to restrict wasting of resources or capital by low level managers. For example, a budget will limit each department or division in term of expenses. By giving, a certain amount of operational capital, each department or division will then come out a most effective way to maximize the efficiency of operational capital. In contrast, inefficient management will exist in company and it will caused unnecessary expenses or even corruption. From shareholder prospective, traditional budgeting assists management team or company more efficiently using of capital.