Budgeting Process in Business

The purpose of this paper is to describe the budget process, variances and the major reasons of the variance to make all the financial decisions of the firm properly. This paper would also be helpful to explain that “make” or “Buy” decisions also play a significant role to improve the efficiency of the firm. In addition, the paper would also be useful to clarify that non-financial performance measure may be unsafe for the image of the firm.

Budget management analysis is used by mangers as a tool and helps determine that all resources available are being used efficiently. The budgets are determined yearly and are based upon the previous year’s budget and variances. This paper will discuss specific strategies to manage budgets within forecast, compare five to seven expense results with budget expectations, describe possible reasons for variances, give strategies to keep results aligned with expectations, recommend three benchmarking techniques, and identify those that might improve budget accuracy, and justify the choices made.

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).

The Marketplace simulation helped me realize how complicated and difficult decision making can be when trying to build a company. Among the most important simulation results were utilizing the budgets and pro forma statements. Budgets are beneficial as a financial plan by listing all planned expenses and income. The purpose is to be able to forecast revenues and expenses and create a business model that operates effectively to make sure overhead can be paid.

A budget is an instrument used to help managers ensure that the resources used effectively and proficiently toward the goals of an organization. A budget projection can be made on a yearly base depending on previous year or existing one. They can further be broken down quarterly or monthly depending on it use. Generating a budget is complex undertaking, and for a budget to be effective the organization ought to follow it strictly. However, no matter how closely a business follows their guidelines there will always be some form of variances. The organization should expect a few variances and be able to work these discrepancies in any budget

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.

Today’s market demands organizations to have a strategic plan. The purpose of the strategic plan describes where the organization wants their organization to go. A strategic plan is a document used to communicate goals, and the actions needed to achieve those goals. In order to remain competitive every organization needs to innovate to stay ahead of the competition. They need to develop new products and services with increasing frequency. The design of these new products and services must meet, or exceed, customer expectations and at the same time, they must generate an acceptable financial return for the organization. However, any business that does not realize the importance of developing new products will not last very long as a consequence

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.

Strategic Planning is one of the most fundamental factors in the success of an organization. This research project will discuss the importance of strategic planning as well as the different components of strategic planning. Many organizations fail to accomplish their goals and tasks due to the lacking of strategic planning. In order for their businesses to be successful, organizations need to be well informed about how the strategic planning process works.

Budget formulation is not a complex task, but it must be thorough. Budgeting decisions are based on past records and future predictions. However, most of these budgeting decisions are based on prior years. One of the biggest challenges facing small organizations is budgeting based on past transactions and being able to allocate resources for the future. The organization cannot simply budget on a progressive plane for income and have too much wiggle room for expenses. Not-for-profit entities must effectively allocate resources that allow the organization to grow or perfect its operations.

Sales anticipation has a several of factors: (1) what are the economic conditions, (2) industry flow, (3) market research studies, (4) advertising promotion, (5) former market share, (6) pricing, (7) technological growth. Companies with large budgeting has committees that has the responsibility for combining preparation of the budget. “The committee ordinarily includes the president, treasurer, chief accountant (controller), and management personnel from each of the major areas of the company, such as sales, production, and research” Budgetary Planning chapter 20 pg. 1034. These committee review and modified and give management the chance to defend the budget goals or petition. The advantage of budgeting analysis plan ahead gives management a target goal and help to evaluating clear objectives or determine early cautionary problems. Its necessity to have sound organizational structure, because this defined the operations. Budgeting analysis can be prepared for any period of time and this influence can affect the budget.

Most entities and organization create budgets as a guide for controlling its spending, prediction of profit, and it expenditure as they progress toward a set goal. Budget involves pulling resources together to achieve a specific goal. According to Gapenski (2006), budgeting is an offshoot in a planning process. A basic managerial accounting tool use in holding planning and control functions together is referred to as set of budgets (p. 255). One major setback manager or budget developer encounter is trying to design a future, a process that cannot be created with the precision just right. This article highlights some financial management

Budgeting is crucial in the well-being of a company especially the financial health status of a company. In fact, no professionally managed firm would fail to budget, since the budget establishes what is authorized, how to plan for purchasing contracts and hiring, and indicates how much financing is needed to support planned activity. It is routine for a company to budget for its expenses. Expense budgets act as a guideline of how much revenue a company would require keeping the activities running. It is used to set the company’s targets for a certain period.

The 20’s century saw the use of budget involve due to a change in the environment. Indeed the control of output used to be obtained by the dissemination of tasks and so traditional budgets were very much highlighted, with a significant top-down influence. As an example of the importance of budget in the 1970’s IBM had about 3,000 people involved in their budgetary process. During the same period, the oil crisis brought concerns about rising in costs and led to the introduction of zero-based budgeting (ZBB), which can lower cost by avoiding blanket increases or decreases to a prior period’s budget. The increase in business uncertainties was in discrepancy with the stifling effect of fixed plans, promoting the use of rolling budgets. The 1990’s saw the growing influence of shareholders and steered the focus on a budget that included a wider view of organisation results, answering the investment community for quarterly updates on results and expectations (Bill Ryan, 2005). Budgets then started being used as a communication tool between the financial community and the organisation, allowing the corporation to be integrated in the capital market. Moreover companies started using flexible budgets rather than static budgets as nowadays various levels of activities can be observed in most organisations. The use of flexible budgets then enables firms to be consistent with their new environment and the market.

Activity based budgeting (ABB) is a method of budgeting where the activities that incur costs in every functional area of an organization are recorded. Their relationships are defined and analyzed. Activities are tied to strategic goals, after which the costs of the activities needed are used to create the budget. Activity-based budgeting involves determining which activities incur costs within an organization, establishing the relationships between them, and then deciding how much of the total budget should be allocated to each activity. Activity-based budgeting is a planning system which costs are associated with activities, and budgeted expenditures based on the expected activity level . These activities are organized according to the company 's goals, and the costs of each are organized to compile the budget. ABB contrasts with traditional budgeting, which usually simply increases the previous year 's budget to account for inflation or revenue growth, ABB seeks out new opportunities and allocates resources in the budget based on them. ABB provides opportunities to align activities with objectives, streamline costs and improve business practices. ABB is a more accurate way to forecast budgeting.