Budgeting - a brief note

A budget is a plan in monetary term covering a certain period of time in the future by management, which facilitates organizational coordination and implementation of such a plan. There are a number of key topics to cover:

1. A budgeting cycle
2. Roles of budgets
3. Master budget and its sub-budgets
4. Types of budgeting (e.g. Kaizen budgeting, activity-based budgeting, zero-based budgeting, a flexible budget,  a rolling budget, etc)
5. Budgeting and responsibility accounting

Budgeting, as a topic in Management Accounting, has been studied for a long time, see for example, CIMA/ICAEW (2004). The subject of budgeting should be examined in the broader intellectual context of corporate planning/ strategic planning; the subject can also be studied from from various perspectives, e.g. cultural, behavioural, and strategic management perspectives, etc..

References

1. Bhimani, A., Horngren,C.T., Datar, S.M. and Foster, G. (2008) Management and Cost Accounting, FT Prentice Hall.
2. Brimson, J.A. an Antos, J. (1999) Driving value using activity-based budgeting, Wiley.
3. CIMA/ICAEW (2004) Better Budgeting: A report on the Better Budgeting Forum from CIMA and ICAEW, July.
4. Hope, J. and Fraser, R. (2003) "Who needs Budgets", Harvard Business Review, February, pp. 108-115.
5. http://josephho33.blogspot.com/2011/08/future-analysis-in-strategic-management.html
6. On traditional budgeting and beyond: http://www.cfoedge.com/resources/articles/cfo-edge-traditional-budgeting-vs-beyond-budgeting.pdf