Budgeting
The budget is basically future
estimates of revenue or cost. Budget is play very important rule in directing
organization activity to achieve long term goals. Budget also serves the
purpose of controlling the organization resources. Budgets can also be used for
the purpose of performance measure of different manager and center.
Types of budgets
There are mainly the following types of
budgets commonly prepared in the organization.
- Periodic budget
- Rolling budget
- Fixed budget
- Flexible budget
- Incremental Budgets
- Zero based budget
Periodic budget
The periodic budget is prepared for a
period for example for one year and does not change during the period.
Rolling budget
The rolling budget is also known as continuous
budget and budget is updated after a specific period of time. The concept is
that budget is updating after some period of time. The advantage of this method
is that budget is regularly updated and new situation incorporated in the
budget, however this type of budget has little budgetary controls.
Fixed Budget
A fixed budget does not change with
level of activity. For example a construction manager has prepared a fixed
budget for the construction of a bridge and site manager require completing the
construction work within this budget. The fixed budget has no answer in certain
situation where the budget depends on the level of activity.
Flexible budget
A flexible budget changes with level of
activity. i.e (number of unit produced).
For example for 10,000 units the production cost was 18,000 and for 12,000 unit
production cost was 20,000. This budget is more practical approach of budgeting
because budget are prepared for operation and activities and this method give
due consideration to level of activity.
Incremental Budget
The incremental budget use the last
year budget as base and the incorporate inflation and other factor in that
budget in that and thus a new budget is prepared.
Advantages of incremental budget
1.
This is very simple
2.
The Time is saved
Disadvantages of incremental budget
The main disadvantage of incremental
budgeting is that the manager will manipulate the figure to get the desired
level of performance in the next period. For example sales manager would keep
the sales figure low so there would be not pressure to achive that level.
Similarly the production manager would keep the wastage level high so that no
one will ask him about the high level of wastage in future.
Zero Based Budgets
Zero based budgets are prepared from
the scratch. This concept try to eliminate the wrong projection and encourages
to prepare the budget on facts and not merely the changing the number in excel
sheet. The biggest limitation of Zero based budget is time consuming.
Advantages of
Zero based budget
Justified Figures
The budget includes
only the justified figures and each manager has to justify the figures before
it is included in the budget. The manager has to prepare a proper case for
approval.
Put Manager
Responsibility
This system of
responsibility is evoked by the Zero budget system. The manager take the
responsibly of preparing the budget and then they are responsible to produce
results in accordance with budgets.
Accuracy and
Realistic
This system ensures
the preparation of more realistic and accurate budget.
Disadvantages of Zero Based Budgets
Time consuming
The zero based require a detail research by the relevant
manager therefore it require much time of manager to prepare the budget.
Formal
This process is very formal and it requires a lot of time
and energies of manager and the manager cannot focus on their main tasks.
Pressure
This budget put extra pressure on manager for accuracy of
estimates and then achievement of target set by themselves.
Attempt of actual figures
This budget tries to prepare the budget with accuracy. The
basic definition that budget is a estimate is ignored.