ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
1. (a) A budget is a formal written statement of management’s plans for a specified future time period,
expressed in financial terms.
2. The primary benefits of budgeting are:
(1) It requires all levels of management to plan ahead and to formalize goals on a recurring basis.
(2) It provides definite objectives for evaluating performance at each level of responsibility.
3. The essentials of effective budgeting are: (1) a sound organizational structure, (2) research and
analysis, and (3) acceptance by all levels of management.
4. (a) Disagree. Accounting information makes major contributions to the budgeting process. Accounting
provides the starting point of budgeting by providing historical data on revenues, costs, and
5. The budget period should be long enough to provide an attainable goal under normal business
conditions. The budget period should minimize the impact of seasonal and cyclical business
fluctuations, but it should not be so long that reliable estimates are impossible. The most common
budget period is one year.
6. Disagree. Long-range planning usually encompasses a period of at least five years. It involves
the selection of strategies to achieve long-term goals and the development of policies and plans to
be able to provide better budgetary estimates. In addition, by involving lower-level managers in
the process, it is more likely that they will perceive the budget as being fair and reasonable. One
disadvantage of participative budgeting is that it takes more time, and thus costs more. Another
disadvantage of participative budgeting is that it may enable managers to game the system
through such practices as budgetary slack.