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Disadvantages of Budget

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Bachelor’s Thesis Faculteit der Economische Wetenschappen Sectie: Accounting, Auditing and Control Studie: Bedrijfseconomie

Budgets
Is the use of budgets out of date?

S.A.D. Sardjoe 298142ss July 12, 2009

Table of contents

Chapter 1 Introduction 2

1.1 Purpose 2

1.2 Method 2

1.3 Scope 2

1.4 Outline 3

Chapter 2 Budgets 4

2.1 Definition of budgets 4

2.2 The use of budgets 5

2.3 The process of budgeting 5

2.4 The advantages of budgets 6

2.5 The disadvantages of budgets 7

2.6 Conclusion 8

Chapter 3 The relevance of budgets within Management and Control 10

3.1 Management control system …show more content…

The general definition of budgets is[1] : ‘Estimate of costs, revenues, and resources over a specified period, reflecting a management 's reading of future financial conditions[2].
Zimmerman (Accounting for Decision Making and Control, 2006) defines budgets as:’ A forecast of the revenues and/or expenses expected to occur within a future time period. Budgets are an integral part of the organization’s performance evaluation and decision rights partitioning system’. Hilton (Managerial Accounting: Creating Value in a Dynamic Business Environment, 2004) describes budgets as: ‘A detailed plan, expressed in quantitative terms, that specifies how resources will be acquired and used during a specified period of time’.

Looking at the definitions above it is clear that there are many different opinions on how to define budgets.
For this thesis I have composed a definition of my own, which will be the main definition for the rest of this thesis. I describe budgets as: An estimation of costs, revenues and resources which will be used as a forecast to specify how resources will be acquired and used during a specified period of time.

2.2 The use of budgets

Budgets can be used in a various amount of ways. The most important ways to use budgets are (Drury 1992) : - planning of the yearly operational activities - coordinating of the activities of the different organization divisions - communicating the plans towards the

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