Types of Budgets

Budgets can be categorized in various ways. Let us go through the types of budgets in detail.

Functional Budgets                           

It relates to any function of the firm such as sales, production, cash, etc. Following budgets are prepared in functional budgets:

      Sales Budget

      Production Budget

      Material Budget

      Manufacturing Budget

      Administrative Cost Budget

      Plant Utilization Budget

      Capital Expenditure Budget

      Research and Development Cost Budget

      Cash Budget

Master Budget or Summarized Budget or Finalized Profit plan

This budget is very useful for the top management of the company because it covers all the information in a summarized manner.

Fixed Budget

It is a rigid budget and is drawn on the assumption that there will be no change in the budget level.

Flexible Budget

It is also called a sliding scale budget. It is useful in:

      the new organizations where it is difficult to foresee,

      the firms where activity level changes due to seasonal nature or change in demand,

      the industries based on change of fashion,

      the units which keep on introducing new products, and

      the firms which are engaged in ship-building business.

Zero Base Budgeting

Zero base budgeting is not based on the incremental approach; previous year figures are not adopted as base.

CIMA has defined it as:

As a method of budgeting, where all activities are revaluated each time a budget is set, discrete levels of each activity are valued and combination is chosen to match the funds available.

Control Ratios

Following ratios are used to evaluate the deviations of the actual performance from the budgeted performance. If the ratio is 100% or more, it represents favorable results and vice-a-versa.

Capacity Ratio

=

Actual hours workedBudgeted hours

Activity Ratio

=

Standard hours for actual production Budgeted hours

 × 100

Efficiency Ratio

=

Standard hours for actual production Actual hours worked

 × 100

Calendar Ratio

=  

Number of actual working days in a period Number of working days in the budgeted period

 × 100