ABSTRACT

The Institute of Cost and Management Accountants offers the following definitions (11.1).

Budgets are ‘financial and quantitative statements, prepared and approved prior to a defined period of time, of the policy to be pursued during that period for the purpose of attaining a given objective’.

Budgetary control is defined as ‘the establishment of budgets relating to the responsibility of executives to the requirements of a policy, and the continuous comparison of actual with budgeted results, either to secure by individual action the objective of that policy or to provide a basis for its revision’.