Budgeting And Financial Management: Questions And Answers

Objectives of a budget system

Question 1 – Question and Answers

Answer the following questions in writing.

1.What are the major objectives of a budget system?

2.Describe the features of cash, revenues and expenditures. Give examples of each category with a linked budget objective.

3.Consider the first line example in the table provided in appendix. Complete the table describing the items listed in the first column by making selections from the following terms.

• Category = Cash/ Revenue/ Expenditure or Capital
• Financial Statement = Cash flow/ Financial performance/ Financial position/ Capital
• Objective = Increase/ Report Revenue/ Manage Expenditures/ Cash and/or Capital

4.Explain how organisational goals determine the master budget.

5.You are responsible for the manufacturing budget preparation. What other forecast or budget/s affects the raw materials budget and in what way? How would a growth in the sales forecast affect the raw materials budget? What will this growth mean to the budgeted statement of financial performance and what should be considered in terms of the capacity of the production department and costs across all departments?

6.The disability manager, Helene, is constantly asking you to increase her budget. You have explained to her on a number of occasions that the board has officially adopted the budget. What will you do if her request begins to take up too much of your time?

7.What accounting standard is relevant to the presentation of financial statements including budgets?

8.You present the financials at the annual general meeting. Separately list three groups of stakeholders you expect to be at this event. How should each group be treated/ what would you expect from them?

9.How can the sales forecast spreadsheet be used to show which period profit milestones occur?

10.How can management use budgets to encourage staff to meet profit/ sales milestones?

11.Describe the benefits of using graphs to explain budget spreadsheets.

12.Which budget is the GST amount transferred to:

a)For cash payment?

b)At the end of the period?

13.What needs to be covered when researching information for the cash flow budget?

14.Identify four factors of management intention in regard to the cash flow budget.

15.Who is legally responsible for supervising the budget?

16.Voyager is a Telco with an innovation that will generate it significant market share growth. This will result in many new customers in several new areas. Telco is aiming for much higher incomes. Consequently it has adopted an organisational expansion policy seeking to maximise income. Voyager is about the revenue forecast but unsure of their total budget expenses.

Explain to Voyager executives the importance of considering related expenses and discuss some of their controls as planning for its aggressive revenue expansion policy.

17.Describe how balances are transferred into and out of the budgeted statement of cash flows to explain the statement and how the closing cash is calculated.

18.How can timesheets assist the accountant to make the annual reporting timeline?

19.What is the budget calendar?

20.Describe how the accountant assists decision making by identifying budget trends.

21.What three steps should be undertaken when making assumptions about feasibility?

22.The business Challenger Co. is expanding. The marketing manager advises the junior accountant that a new sales region will double the revenue assumption and that there are no foreseeable expenditures. What is the significance of the revenue assumption to completing the sales forecast? What steps should the junior accountant take in preparing the assumption for the sales forecast?

23.What is unusual about the related expense assumption for Challenger’s expansion?

24.List several criteria management might use to complete the project selection process.

25.Prepare a budget versus actual variance analysis report for the end of March for the community services organisation Discoverer. They made an original assumption based on the respite manager’s undertaking that a new food expense would be year to date $900 with the actual amount spent $2,700 at the 31.3.20XX. Include food for this month separately on the report for $300 actual and only $100 budgeted. Include whether the amount is favourable (F) or unfavourable (U), show the percentage (%).

26.Prepare a request for budget revision form provided in appendix to accompany the variance report. Note that the request is due to a new program which had an original incorrect assumption.

27.How frequently should the budget review occur? Under what conditions is this different and when will the review occur in that case?

28.When are rolling budgets appropriate and inappropriate? What other factor must be considered when adopting a policy for using them?

Questions:

1. Major objectives of budget include providing a roadmap for the organization and its employees, managing resources of the organization effectively, making optimum utilization of resources, achieve organizational objectives etc.
2. Cash budget helps in handling cash resources of an organization. Revenue budget is prepared with the objective of maximizing revenue and expenditures budget helps in minimizing the amount of expenditures.
3.  

4. The master budget is prepared keeping in mind the organizational goals. Thus, the master budget is one of the tools in the hands of the management to outline the organizational objectives to its stakeholders.
5. The procurement budget affects the raw materials budget as the cost of procurement to a large extent determine the cost of raw materials.

Growth in sales means that the requirement of raw materials for production would also be higher hence, the raw material costs will increase with the increase in expected sales.

Growth in sales will positively influence the financial performance of an organization however, it is important that the organization has required capacity to achieve the targeted sales. Costs in all departments must not exceed beyond the desired level in order to improve the overall financial performance (Bryson, 2018).   

6. In that case it would better to replace the disability manager immediately with come one who understands the objectives and requirements of the organization better.
7. AASB 101 is the relevant standard for presentation of financial statements including budgets.
8. Shareholders: The shareholders are mainly concerned with the financial performance and potion of the company.

Representative of Financial institutions: Liquidity and solvency position of the company are main concerns of the group.

Creditors: Short term liquidity position of the company concerns the group.

9. Sales forecast spreadsheet helps in identifying the expected level of sales at different periods in the future. This will help in calculating the expected profit at these points to identify the milestone profit in a period.
10. Budgets shows the expected future outcome of an organization. Management can inspire the employees by showing the possible effects of improvement in performance of the organization on the employees’ salaries and benefits.
11. Graph shows the forecasting sales, revenue, expenditures, profits and other items in simple picturesque forms. This helps in understanding the expected future performance of an organization very easily (Chenhall & Moers, 2015).
12. 1. GST is transferred to cash budget.
    2. At the end of the period in expenditures budget.
13. The expected cash inflows and cash outflows of an organization from operating, investing and financing activities.
14. 1. To make effective use of cash resources.
    2. For cash management.
    3. To have a better liquidity position.
15. The departmental heads are legally responsible to supervise the departmental budgets with the manager responsible to supervise the master budget.
16. It is important to consider the long term impact of expansion plan on the future of an organization. All related expenditures shall be considered in order to ensure that the organization is fully aware of the expected impact of such expansion decision in the future. Aggressive revenue expansion plan requires huge amount of investment and expenditures thus, the management must evaluate the expected benefits from the expansion plan before taking any final decision in respect to the expansion strategy. Expenses control mechanisms should also be used to reduce the expenditures to the maximum extent possible.
17. The cash flow budget is used as a guide while disbursing cash for different items however, often the cash disbursement might be different from the budget. The management must use the cash flow budget as a guide while disbursing cash. Closing cash balance is calculated after adding all cash receipts and deducting the aggregate amount of cash disbursements from the cash receipts. The net cash inflow or outflow as the cash may be shall be added to the opening cash balance to calculate the closing cash balance.             
18. Timesheets will help an accountant to complete different elements of accounting and financial reporting on time to complete annual reporting on time.
19. Budget information submitted to the department managers as per the schedule dates which are stored in a budget calendar (Sayles, 2017).
20. The trends from budget is identified and showed to the management. On the basis of such trends management decides the future course of action.
21. 1. Technical evaluation.
    2. Financial evaluation and
    3. Operational evaluation.
22. The significance of revenue assumption will be properly assessed after evaluating the practical implications of such assumption. If it is true that the revenue will increase without any expenditure then the management should certainly expand its operations in new sales region.

The junior accountant should consider the expected increase in sales to prepare the sales forecast.

23. It is quite unusual to belief that the expansion of operations in different sales region will not increase the expenditures of the company.
24. A management should first complete the evolution process of a project on the basis of technical, financial and operational feasibility of the project. After that use of investment appraisal techniques such net present value method, internal rate of return method and others shall be used to evaluate the expected outcome of the project in the future.     
25.  

The variances are unfavourable.

27. The budget should be reviewed frequently in order to ensure that the necessary adjustments are made to adjust the budgeted amounts as required under the actual circumstances. It is desirable to review budgets at-least quarterly if not sooner.
28. The feature of a rolling budget is that it is continuously up-to-dated thus, for an organization growing continuously, rolling budget would be appropriate. For a stable organization with established market share rolling budget would be inappropriate. The nature of business, transactions, seasonal effects on the performance of an organization all these factors must be considered while deciding about the policy of budget.

Part a:

Part b:

Part c:

Part d:

The above graph shows different elements of cash budget for the four quarters.

Part e:

1. It has been assumed that the payment of salaries, bonus, rent, electricity and printing expenses have been made in respective quarters when expenditures have been incurred.
2. The budgets are prepared on the basis of certain assumtp0iosn since the future is uncertain and unknown. In order to counter the risk of uncertainty it is important to conduct the business operations by using the resources effectively.

Budgets have been prepared by taking into consideration the past performances of the company along with future expectations. In order to complete the budgets certain assumptions have been made since the future is uncertain. It is important to review the budgets periodically to make necessary adjustments to the budgeted figures as and when necessary.    

The objectives of preparing the budgets include motivating and inspiring the employees of the company to achieve the organizational objectives in the future.

Part a:

Part b:

Sub part 1:

Sub part 2:

Part c:

Sub part 1:

Sub part 2:

Part d:

Part e:

Sub part 2:

Sub part 3:

Average budgeted sale price for mugs is (600,000/200,000) = $3 per mug.

Sub part 4:

Sub part 5:

References:

Bryson, J. M. (2018). Strategic planning for public and nonprofit organizations: A guide to strengthening and sustaining organizational achievement. John Wiley & Sons.

Chenhall, R. H., & Moers, F. (2015). The role of innovation in the evolution of management accounting and its integration into management control. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 47, 1-13.

Sayles, L. R. (2017). Managing large systems: Organizations for the future. Routledge.