Importance of a budget

A Budget is a plan expressed in monetary terms. It is prepared prior to the budget period and may show income, expenses and the capital to be used i.e. a budget is what the company wants to happen as opposed to a forecast which is what is likely to happen.

The budget may be prepared for the following reasons:

1) As a planning aid

2) To communicate ideas and plans to everyone affected by them

3) To co-ordinate the activities of different departments or sub-units in the organization

4) To provide the framework for responsibility accounting whereby managers of budget centers are made responsible for the achievement of budget targets for the operations under their personal control.

5) To establish a system of controls by setting up targets against which actual results will be compared.

6) To motivate employees to improve performance.

Budgetary control is the foundation of budgets relating the responsibility of executives to the requirements of a policy and the continuous comparison of actual and budgeted results either to service by individual action the objectives of that policy or to provide a basis for its revision.