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Importance of strategic decision making
Importance of strategic decision making
Strengths and weaknesses of creating a budget
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Budgeting Assignment
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 Budget Process
Budgetary planning may differ between organizations. Single-period budgets and rolling budgets have methodologies that provide advantages and disadvantages that may make one budget time frame better than another. A single-period may require less time in planning during a fiscal year, but is less accurate than a rolling budget that is continuously planned on a repetitive basis. In either case, budgets are planned in advance in order for a company to operate profitably, and less so to have "actual results equal budgeted results." (p. 496)
The budget process, according to Marshall, is to "develop and communicate" how an organization' economic, industry, and organizational strategies will be effected within the budgeted time frame. (p.497) People within the organization from planners, economists, and managers contribute facets of the strategic budget process in order to meet organizational needs. Upper management then typically approves those budgets. The operating budget is the forecast of activity that encompasses the results of the budget ...
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...t allows for forecasts of sales based on historical and growth analysis.
The development (or iteration) of the new system was approved due to successful budgetary results over the previous two years and growth trends expected over the next two years. Additionally, ongoing maintenance on the system as problems began to arise was beginning to negatively influence production performance, and a need to iterate the system to incorporate evolving production goals was identified. The successful budget of the previous years encouraged the approval of replacing the current conversion system with a successor that promises to increase production performance while lowering the fixed costs of salaried programmers needed to maintain it.
References
Marshall, M.H., McManus, W.W., Viele, V.F. (2003). Accounting: What the Numbers Mean. 6th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Companies.
Operating budgets are budgets that deal mainly with the day-to-day operations of a facility. This may include wages, utilities, rent, and items purchased that have the intent of lasting less than a year (Johnston, n.d). This type budget provides the needed information regarding the cash on hand needed to operate the facility during a fiscal year. Capital expenditure budgets deal with more long term items such as equipment or property. As stated by Johnston (n.d.), it is necessary to have a capital budget for continued growth of the business. You complete this task by purchasing assets that produce an income. Capital expenditure budget have the potential to cover a five- to ten-year period (Baker & Baker, 2014, p.174). Items included in the capital expenditure budget may also include loan interest and bondholder's interest. The operating budget and the capital expenditure budget interact with one another. To demonstrate an example: a healthcare facility purchases a chemistry analyzer for its clinical laboratory. The chemistry analyzer is placed in the capital expenditure budget, but the maintenance for the analyzer is placed in the operational budget. The capital expenditure expense is the chemistry analyzer, but the materials used to maintain the chemistry analyzer are operational expense.
It is vital that the operating budget ties in with long-term strategies by planning, setting objects with goals, and forecasting the future. According to Mr. Wright, Robertwood Johnson University Hospital adopted the GE Model of “operation excellence” with long-term strategies with their operating budget. With the ” operations excellence” strategy, the organization has over the years transformed the operating budget by accurately tracking and constantly improving their revenue cycle yearly by setting payment practices to generate revenue to achieve specific financial objectives of greater demand with the maximum revenue margins along with eliminating waste and streamlining the budget by cutting expenses and prioritizing programs
During the year, budget performance was monitored closely. Each week’s and monthly, sales revenue performance figures were sent to Herb Stolzer by Roy Black. Roy Black also sent a monthly management report to Stolzer that included income statement highlights and a summary of key balance sheet figures and ratios. All information was provided with reference to (1) position last month (2) position this month (3) budgeted position.
According to Argyris (1953), “budgets frequently serve as a basis for rewarding and penalizing those in the organization” (Argyris, 1953, p. 97). Further, Argyris (1953) describes a budget as a measuring instrument, which sets goals which mean that people can be measured in this way (Argyris, 1953). People tend to have a problem with this and complain about this part of the budget as no one wants to seem as inefficient. For supervisors, budgets can be a way to put things in writing, and thus vent other unrelated issues (Argyris, 1953). Also, budgets can be considered to be pressure devices to keep employees on track and motivated, while also being pressured (Argyris, 1953).
Comparably, an alternate prescriptive model of budgeting is the Zero Based Budgeting theory (ZBB), which offers budget techniques and suggestions. Mostly utilized in smaller organizations, ZBB is incompatible with AMB because it is hyper-analytic where efficiency and rationality are primary goals. Key decision makers determine budgetary decision packages based on the prior fiscal year’s statistics. Marginality theory proponents adopt a “means-to-ends” (Williams and Calabrese, 2013, 8) mentality, supporting control performance budgeting measures like line-item restrictions, budget reports and cost-benefit analysis. Like Goodnow, Buck and Cleveland, I am an advocate for a “complete budgetary process” that is rational and fair.
Marshall, D. H., McManus, W. W, & Viele, D. (2002). Accounting: What the Numbers Mean. 5th ed. San Francisco: Irwin/McGraw-Hill.
Participative Budgeting is the situation in which budgets are designed and set after input from subordinate managers, instead of merely being imposed. The idea behind this sort of budgeting is to assign responsibility to subordinate managers and place a form of personal ownership on the final budget. Nearly two decades of management accounting research has resulted in equivocal findings on the consequences and effects of participative budgeting (Lindquist 1995). Participative budgeting certainly has various advantages, these include the transferral of information from subordinate to superior increased job satisfaction for the subordinate, budgetary responsibility and goal congruence. Its disadvantages include budgetary slack and negative motivation, however it is the conditions in which participative budgeting takes place determines whether the budgeting process is successful. The conditions are dependent on various factors such as the level of participation, level of subordinate influence, the extent to which budgetary slack takes place, volatility, job related information, and the complexity of the budget.
Quantitative plans are called budgets. Budgets are prepared to impose cost controls on the activities of an organization (Chenhall, 1986).Budgets are then used to evaluate the performance of the management and budget itself is considered as a standard to evaluate the performance Solomon, 1956). The purpose of the budget is also to implement the strategy of the organization and communicate it to the employees of the organization Rickards (2006). The change in the external environment has led to the change in the budgeting approaches from the initial cash based budgets to the zerio based budgets (Bovaird, 2007).
A budgetary estimate is used to allocate money into an organization's budget. Many organizations develop budgets at least two years into the future. Budgetary estimates are made one to two years prior to the software project completion. The accuracy of budgetary estimates is typically ten percent below to twenty-five percent above the actual final cost of the project.
Every government entity has a primary goal, which is to be as efficient and effective as possible while expending the smallest amount of resources. In addition, the resources expended cannot be more than the resources received as revenues. The budgeting process is a tool that assists government entities in being both efficient and effective. Before a budget can be adequately prepared, you must first understand the budgeting concept and secondly be knowledgeable of budget types.
Whatever type of budget we create, we need to take this fact into the consideration that the budget process is a multidimensional process. There are tools which enable us to make better financial decisions such as “financial statements, assessments of risk, time value of the money, macroeconomic
Marshall, D., McManus, W., & Viele, D. (2004). Accounting: What the numbers mean. [University of Phoenix Custom Edition e-text]. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies.
It requires an adequate and sound organizational structure, that is, there must be a definite assignment of responsibility for each function of the enterprise. Budgeting compels all the members of management, from the top to bottom to participate in the establishment of goals and plans. Budgeting compels departmental managers to make plans in harmony with the other departments and of the entire enterprise. Budgeting helps the management to put down in figures what is necessary for a satisfactory performance. Budgeting helps the management to plan for the most economical use of labor, material and capital. Budgeting tends to remove the cloud of uncertainty that exists in many organizations, especially among lower levels of management, relative to basic policies and objectives. Budgeting promotes an understanding among members of management of their co-workers' problems. Budgeting force management to give adequate attention to the effects of general business conditions. Budgeting aids in obtaining bank credit as banks commonly require a projection of future operations and cash flows to support
In conclusion, profit planning is a crucial aspect of managerial accounting. Hopefully I have helped to show the importance in composing a company’s budget, the different types of budgets that may be implemented, and also how essential it is for managers to enforce and utilize them. Businesses need profit planning so that the maximum amount of profit may be generated. This is true for all forms of business whether it be for a product or service, manufacturing or retail. Without an accurate budget and diligent managers to monitor it, your company may be missing out on potential profit and growth
Performance budgeting encompasses the causal relationship among program funding and the probable results of that program and uses this information as a means to develop an actual budget. A major focal point of performance budgeting is accountability; this type of budgeting is often utilized by administrators to obtain cost efficiency and establish useful budget forecasting.