Mastering the Business Cycle


Book Description




Budgeting Basics and Beyond


Book Description

A convenient and up-to-date reference tool for today's financial and nonfinancial managers in public practice and private industry If the very thought of budgets pushes your sanity over the limit, then this practical, easy-to-use guide is just what you need. Budgeting Basics and Beyond, Fourth Edition equips you with an all-in-one resource guaranteed to make the budgeting process easier, less stressful, and more effective. The new edition covers rolling budgets (forecasts), activity-based budgeting, life-cycle budgeting. Cloud computing, Balanced Scorecard, budgeting for nonprofit organizations, business simulations for executive and management training, and much more! Includes several new software packages, computer-based models and spreadsheet applications, including Value Chain Management software, Financial Planning and Performance software, Web 2.0, Cloud computing, and capital budgeting software Features case studies, illustrations, exhibits, forms, checklists, graphs, samples, and worked-out solutions to a wide variety of budgeting, planning, and control problems Offers financial planning and new types of financial modeling, variance analysis, Web-based budgeting, active budgeting illuminating "what-if" analyses throughout, spreadsheet applications, break-even analysis, project analysis, and capital budgeting Budgeting Basics and Beyond, Fourth Edition is a practical, easy-to-use problem-solver and up-to-date reference tool for today's financial and nonfinancial managers in public practice and private industry.




10 Steps to Successful Budgeting


Book Description

Calculate for Business Success The budgeting process may produce anxiety, but it can be managed. The keys are planning, organization, documentation, preparation, and follow-up. The essence is plan first, budget later. 10 Steps to Successful Budgeting walks you through the fundamentals, explaining your role in your organization’s planning and budgeting process. Authors Lianabel Oliver and Eduardo Nin start with a macro perspective, providing an overview of the planning and budgeting process and how it is typically structured within an organization. They then move to preparing a sound budget and defending it to the next level of management. Their combined experience of over 30 years in planning and budgeting will help you navigate this process successfully. The authors’ simple, clear explanations and true-to-life examples of budgets and planning tools will help you clarify your departmental spending needs for yourself and others. Each planning and budgeting cycle, the authors explain, represents an opportunity for change. It is a chance to revisit the old and embrace the new. The budget is not something to fear on your to-do list, but a time to reexamine who you are, what you do, and how you can use your resources more effectively.




Beyond Budgeting


Book Description

The annual budgeting process is a trap. Pressured by fixed targets and performance incentives, managers focus on making the numbers instead of making a difference, meeting set goals instead of maximizing potential. With their compensation at stake, managers often resort to deceitful-even unethical-behavior. In the end, everybody loses-the employee, the company, and ultimately the customer. Now, finance experts Jeremy Hope and Robin Fraser reveal the results of an intensive study aimed at fixing the broken budgeting process. They argue that companies must abandon traditional budgeting contracts in favor of a radical new model that links performance measurement to evolving competitive benchmarks-and shifts the firm's focus from controlling employee behavior to delivering customer value. The Beyond Budgeting model is built on the best practices of companies that have successfully revised their centralized planning and budgeting processes. It combines a leadership vision that devolves more authority to operating managers and a finance vision that enables fast decision making through appropriate tools and accessible information. Through vivid examples, Hope and Fraser illustrate how companies can implement these shared visions-and the long-term benefits that accrue from embracing them. Offering a compelling case for breaking free from the budgeting trap, this book paves the way toward making organizations better places to work for, invest in, and do business with.




Budgeting for Profit


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Memos to the Governor, Third Edition


Book Description

This revised and updated edition of Memos to the Governor is a concise and highly readable guidebook that explains in clear, understandable prose the technical, economic, and political dynamics of budget making. Updated with many new examples of budget quandaries from recent years, this book helps current and future public administrators untangle the knotty processes of budget preparation and implementation. Authors Dall W. Forsythe and Donald J. Boyd outline the budgeting process through a series of memos from a budget director to a newly elected governor—a format that helps readers with little or no background understand complicated financial issues. They cover all of the steps of budget preparation, from strategy to execution, explaining technical vocabulary, and discussing key topics including baseline budgeting, revenue forecasting, and gap-closing options. Forsythe and Boyd bring fresh insights into such issues as the importance of a multiyear strategic budget plan, the impact of the business cycle on state budgets, the tactical problems of getting budgets adopted by legislatures, and, of course, the relationship between governor and budget officer. Memos to the Governor is a painless, practical introduction to budget preparation for students of and practitioners in public administration and public-sector financial management.




Government Budget Forecasting


Book Description

Revenue and expenditure forecasting plays an important role in public budgeting and financial management, particularly during times of financial constraint, when citizens impose greater accountability upon government to use taxpayer dollars more efficiently. Despite its significance, revenue and expenditure forecasting is often overlooked in the budget process, and there is an imbalance between practice and research in this area. Based on the collaboration of budget scholars and practitioners, Government Budget Forecasting fulfills two purposes: Enhances the understanding of revenue and expenditure estimation both theoretically and practically Stimulates dialogue and debate among practitioners and academicians to identify good forecast practices as well as areas for improvement Divided into four parts, this comprehensive reference first examines forecast practices at the federal, state, and local levels, drawing on case studies that include California, Texas, and Louisiana. It then explores consensus systems and risk assessment, considering political factors and the costs of forecast errors. The text concludes with a call to transparency and guidance from a code of ethics, and a look at forecasting practices in emerging countries.