Research, either through a journal article (secondary source) or through an interview (primary source), how a company handles its budgeting process and describe the process for the class.  You should include either the name of the company or the industry and include your reference for the article or interview.

(here is an example): The firm I have interviewed about is TI-Trust, Inc:

On an annual basis, they set their next fiscal year budget by taking the last 3 years results (financial numbers/gross income/expenses/net income/etc) and current year to date financials and compare them to their budget to see where they are missing what they anticipated.  Then they look at each individual line item like recurring revenue, one time revenue, misc income and do an analysis of what past results can show them for growth/lost business and what they anticipate the next year will provide for additional revenue.  They do the same for expenses, line by line they look at the previous periods trends, current year to date results, and what their future strategic initiatives may reduce or increase expenses.  For example, if they know they need to hire 2 additional people in the coming year then they will need to budget for additional payroll costs.  

Annually their Executive team has a strategic planning meeting to go over what their goals and benchmarks are.  They plan for potential new types of services they can offer, new client types, status of existing clients and lines of business, new markets/offices they want to get into or do more marketing in.  They work on their 1 year plan, 3 year plan, and 5 year plan in this meeting.  Where they see where their company is going and how they are going to get there.  

Once the budget is finalized, the Board of Directors alters or approves their numbers and that's what they use for the coming year to compare actual results to.  

On a monthly basis throughout the year, they annualize actual results to budgeted results and report to the Executive Team of management any variances of more than 10%, so the team can evaluate where their assumptions were incorrect and they can make corrections if it's something that is going to be ongoing throughout the year.  If it's a one time income/expense item that they didn't plan for then they leave the budget as originally set and prepare an explanation.  On a quarterly basis, they report to the Board of Directors any of these variances, the reasons for the variances, and any adjustments to budget for review and approval.  Then the following year during planning they use these adjustments/variances to help them perfect the budget for future years.

Source: Julie Kenning, CFO and Vice President of Operations at TI-Trust, Inc

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

The budget cycle consists of four phases 1 prepara tion and submission 2 approval 3 execution and 4 audit and evaluation The preparation and submission phase is the most difficult to describe because ... View the full answer