Guillermo Furniture Store Budget Analysis Paper
Hilton Glynn, Steven Briggs, Courtney Mercer, and Scott Langer
ACC/561
6 June 2010
William Wyngaard
Guillermo Furniture Store Budget Analysis Paper
According to Horngren, Sundem, Stratton, Burgstahler, and Schatzberg (2008), a study suggested that more than 150 organizations in North America listed budgeting as the most frequently used cost-management tool. This indicates that the importance of Guillermo’s budget cannot be over-stated. A budget establishes the guidelines for operating and controlling the business using anticipated income and expenses activities. It allows managers to compare expected financial objectives with actual outcomes. Managers can then evaluate how
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For some critical items, any deviation may prompt a follow up by the appropriate party. However, for most items - like the budgets for finishing wood or flame retardant coating, even if processes go normally, variances are still unlikely to be exactly zero. Although for some items Guillermo must set a specific range of an acceptable variance based on economic analysis to determine if a variance is worth an investigation. Some companies use variances primarily to fix blame, and often find that managers resort to cheating and understating to under- mine the system (Horngren et al., 2008). If the lower-level managers know that the variances will be held against them it may cause some level of ethical misconduct. This system has led managers to cheat and falsify reports to avoid unfavorable variances (Horngren et al., 2008). The lower level managers’ ethics can be questioned but the system is at fault as much as the managers. Conclusion Any successful endeavor requires careful planning and controlling actions. Managers should have clearly communicated objectives against which to measure performance, quickly identify variances and take actions to correct as necessary. The budgeting process creates the organization’s operations master plan and is most effective when it engages employees at all levels of the organization.
References
Horngren, C. T., Sundem, G. L., Stratton, W. O., Burgstahler, D., & Schatzberg, J. (2008). Introduction to management
Budget management analysis is used by mangers as a tool and helps determine that all resources available are being used efficiently. The budgets are determined yearly and are based upon the previous year’s budget and variances. This paper will discuss specific strategies to manage budgets within forecast, compare five to seven expense results with budget expectations, describe possible reasons for variances, give strategies to keep results aligned with expectations, recommend three benchmarking techniques, and identify those that might improve budget accuracy, and justify the choices made.
This research paper is a brief discussion of budget management analysis. Budgeting is the key to financial management, and is the key to translates an organization goals or plan into money. Budgeting is a rough estimate of how much a company will need to get their work done, and provides the basis for evaluating performance, a source of motivation, coordinating business activities, a tool for management communication and instructions to employees. Without a budget an organization would be like a driver, driving blinded without instructions or any sense of direction, that’s how important a budget is to every organization and individual likewise (Clark, 2005).
The manager must remember that the budget is completed with a goal in mind. All employees should be aware of the budget and how it ties to the ultimate goals or plans for that department (Walsh, 2016). This budget should have a strategy and effectively communicate the department goals. The manager should take the long-range plan to build the annual budget with this plan in mind (Finkler, 2017).
Ineffective practices in creating and monitoring a budget include failure of management to integrate the operating budget with other planning efforts (Academic Writing Tips, 2011). Organizational leaders should ensure that the long term and intermediate goals correlate with the operating budget. Failure to align the operating budget with various assumptions such as size, scope, and nature of future operations can pose a problem (Academic Writing Tips, 2011). According to Finkler and Ward (2006), upper management and financial officers usually create the operating budget omitting frontline and unit managers. This process can lead to failure in the financial management practices
Kessler, E. H. (Ed.) (2013). Encyclopedia of management theory (Vols. 1-2). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Ltd. doi: 10.4135/9781452276090
\Governments undertake budgeting as one of the crucial activities with a budget comprising of a plan regarding financial operations that comprise of estimated revenues for financing estimated expenditures within a given period (Florida Finance Officers Association, 2011). Effective budget processes require involvement of all stakeholders so as to enhance in arriving at a budget that is well planned as well as communicated to the respective stakeholders.
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.
Budgeting is the systematic method of allocating financial, physical, and human resources to achieve an organization’s strategic goals. Budgets are utilized by for-profit and non-profit organizations to monitor the progress towards the goals, assist in the control of spending, and help predict cash flow for the organization.
Kessler, E. H. (Ed.) (2013). Encyclopedia of management theory (Vols. 1-2). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Ltd. doi: 10.4135/9781452276090
Another advantage is control and evaluation. It helps to think about how to correct company’s problems, if they have them. Motivation is another important advantage. Budget can motivate to reach the goals. It also can force managers to think and plan for the future. Budgeting helps to ensure that everyone in the organisation is pulling in the same direction. The budgeting process provides a means of allocating resources to those parts of the organisation where they can be used most effectively.
Bergman, R. Coulter, M. Robbins, S., & Stagg, I. (2012). Management 6 (pp. 86-91). New South Wales: Pearson.
Budget formulation and use are tools that guide many decision making strategies in business. The measures that are least effective could create an avalanche of catastrophic events that can negatively impact the decision making strategies. It is in the best interest of the pertinent parties to draft an operating budget based on a collective set of information relating to organizational vision and mission. Ineffective measures can be catastrophic based on the foundation for measures used in creating the budget. Among the many issues organizations face that relates to creating an effective operating budget results from poor
Budgeting is crucial in the well-being of a company especially the financial health status of a company. In fact, no professionally managed firm would fail to budget, since the budget establishes what is authorized, how to plan for purchasing contracts and hiring, and indicates how much financing is needed to support planned activity. It is routine for a company to budget for its expenses. Expense budgets act as a guideline of how much revenue a company would require keeping the activities running. It is used to set the company’s targets for a certain period.
“It’s clearly a budget. It’s got a lot of numbers in it” (George W. Busch 2005). This definition of a budget can be supplemented using the Oxford dictionary, which states that a budget is an estimate of income and expenditures for a set period of time. Nowadays almost every business uses budgets and managers use them as a tool in order to set targets. In other words managers can, with the use of budgets, explain in a financial way what are the
Budget and budgetary control practices are undeniably indispensable as organizations routinely go about their business activities and operations. These organizations are constantly on the alert on how actual levels of performance agree with planned or budgeted performance. A budget expresses a plan in monetary terms. It is prepared and approved prior to a particular budgeted period and explicitly may show the income, expenditure and the capital to be employed by organizations in achieving their goals and objectives.