Research Paper on:
Should Budgets Be Prepared by Managers?

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
prepared by the accounts department who, on the basis of past management reports, can decide more accurately what should happen in the future. DO YOU AGREE? No, I do  not agree. The accounts department has all the data but they do not have knowledge and understanding of the non-financial type of data the manager possesses. Looking at historical  numbers does not provide enough insight into what is really happening in any given department. Furthermore, there may be plans for a department to embark on a special project or  to achieve a special goal that the accounts department or financial manager may not even be aware of. The budgeting process for any department in any organization should be a  collaborative process. That means communication must occur between the managers and the financial or accounts department. If a budget is going to serve its function, building that budget requires the  knowledge and insight of both the manager and the representatives from the accounts department. In all likelihood, if a manager over-budgets resources, such as staff, equipment, supplies, whatever, it will  be because that managers previous budgets have been cut by the accounts department. The operating budget of any department, and, in fact, for the company, is the departments business  plan in financial terms (Business Accounting Solutions). The budget should reflect the companys goals and it should also be used to measure and evaluate performance (Business Accounting Solutions). The departments  budgets must, of course, fit within the companys annual budget (Business Accounting Solutions). The budget is an important management tool (Edwin L. Cox School Of Business, 2002). If the budget  is part of the process of measuring and evaluating performance, the persons who are best able to do this are the managers, not the accounts department. Managers supervise the daily