Using Budgets for Management and Control

Overview/Description
One of the most important uses of budgets is as a control tool. Once the budgets for various departments are planned and approved, they drive each department's activities to achieve its budgetary goals. Departmental managers along with organizational leadership review department's performance over a designated period and identify variances from budget goals. In particular, they identify adverse variances and, where possible, they take corrective measures to bring department's performance back on the track. If the causes of variance are beyond organization's control, the budgets have to be revised. This course explores budget variance analysis as a tool for controlling and managing business activities in an organization. It presents some examples of effective management during the budgetary planning and control process. It also discusses various types of budget variances and how to identify some of the common ones, using appropriate examples. And it explores variances, their underlying causes, and which ones are worth investigating using a budgeted income statement.

Target Audience
Finance and nonfinance professionals, functional managers, executives, and all individuals involved directly or indirectly with budgetary planning and an organization's control process

Expected Duration (hours)
1.0

Lesson Objectives

Using Budgets for Management and Control

recognize examples of effective management during the budgetary planning and control process

determine how to respond to variances in a given scenario

match examples of causes of variances that impact profit to the appropriate corrective actions

determine which variances of an income statement variance report are worth investigating in a given scenario