DEATH TO BUDGETING.

Death to Budgeting

Death to Budgeting

Introduction

As Gowthorpe (2003: P457) argued, that "A budget is a plan, expressed in financial and/or more general quantitative terms, which extends forward for a period into the future." Budgeting actually refers to the process that, after the strategic plan of the business has been made, companies made a short term plan (usually one year) to meet the strategic purpose. Traditional budgeting has offered a lot of contributions in so many years' practice. But it seems it is more and more unsuitable for the modern business. In this paper, I will give a brief induction for traditional budgeting; and then discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the traditional budgeting; last I will explain and evaluate the alternative.

Every business leader wants competitive success, the best management team, continuous innovation, low costs, loyal customers, and high standards of corporate governance and control. The benefits of great business planning are obvious - better use of capital, more efficient operations and many other. According to the article on FT, the indexes of traditional budgeting include: product profitability, department costs, unit sales, and capital efficiency ratios.

Richard Barrett, VP of International Marketing at ALG Software, comments, "The annual budget is still the most widely used performance management process and the primary tool for controlling expenditure and setting performance targets." Generally speaking, the objectives of budgeting are as following:

Budgeting report provides information to determine whether current-year revenues were sufficient to pay for current-year services.

Budgeting report demonstrates whether resources were obtained and used in accordance with the entity's legally adopted budget.

It also demonstrates compliance with other finance-related legal or contractual requirements.

Budgeting report provides information to assist managers in assessing the service efforts, costs, and accomplishments of the organisational entity.

Over the past 30 years, governmental entities and organisations have used a variety of budget approaches and formats. Such as: (1) line-item, or "traditional," budgeting; (2) program budgeting; (3) zero-based budgeting (ZBB); and (4) site-based budgeting. It should be noted that the formats of the prepared budgets may be quite similar; for example, the format of a site-based budget may be quite similar to the format of a line-item budget. Each of the basic approaches has relative advantages and limitations.

Line-item budgeting was a widely used approach in many organizations because of its simplicity and its control orientation. It is referred to as the "historical" approach because managers often base their expenditure requests on historical expenditure and revenue data. One important aspect of line-item budgeting is that it offers flexibility in the amount of control established over the use of resources, depending on the level of expenditure detail (e.g., fund, function, object) incorporated into the document.

The line-item budget approach has several advantages that account for its wide use. It offers simplicity and ease of preparation. It is a familiar approach to those involved in the budget development process. This method is consistent with the lines of authority and responsibility in organisational units. As a result, this approach enhances organisational control and allows the accumulation of expenditure ...