Budgeting can be described as a systematic process for expressing future plans in formal quantitative terms, allocating resources to achieve strategic goals, monitoring progress toward goals, controlling spending, predicting cash flow and profits, and serving as a vehicle for communicating plans in an orderly manner throughout the organization. Sample best practices include linking budget development to the corporate strategy and merging the budget and production plan into one document.

In this tool, we’ve included a guide that provides a systematic process and the best-practice elements for managing an organization’s budgeting function.