Budget

A budget is a quantitative expression of a financial plan for a defined period of time. It may include planned sales volumes and revenues, resource quantities, costs and expenses, assets, liabilities and cash flows. It expresses strategic plans of business units, organizations, activities or events in measurable terms.

A budget is the sum of money allocated for a particular purpose and the summary of intended expenditures along with proposals for how to meet them.

A budget (derived from old French word bougette, purse) is a quantified financial plan for a forthcoming accounting period.

A budget is an important concept in microeconomics, which uses a budget line to illustrate the trade-offs between two or more goods. In other terms, a budget is an organizational plan stated in monetary terms.

Budget helps to aid the planning of actual operations by forcing managers to consider how the conditions might change and what steps should be taken now and by encouraging managers to consider problems before they arise. It also helps co-ordinate the activities of the organization by compelling managers to examine relationships between their own operation and those of other departments. Other essentials of budget include:

In summary, the purpose of budgeting tools:

The budget of a company is often compiled annually, but may not be a finished budget, usually requiring considerable effort, is a plan for the short-term future, typically allows hundreds or even thousands of people in various departments (operations, human resources, IT, etc.) to list their expected revenues and expenses in the final budget.

If the actual figures delivered through the budget period come close to the budget, this suggests that the managers understand their business and have been successfully driving it in the intended direction. On the other hand, if the figures diverge wildly from the budget, this sends an 'out of control' signal, and the share price could suffer. Campaign planners incur two types of cost in any campaign: the first is the cost of human resource necessary to plan and execute the campaign. the second type of expense that campaign planners incur is the hard cost of the campaign itself.

A budget is a fundamental tool for an event director to predict with a reasonable accuracy whether the event will result in a profit, a loss or will break-even. A budget can also be used as a pricing tool.

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