A cost is generally understood to be that sacrifice incurred in an economic activity to achieve a specific objective, such as to consume, exchange, or produce. All types of organizations- businesses, not-for-profits, governmental- incur costs. To achieve missions and objectives, an organization acquires resources, transforms them in some manner, and delivers units of product or service to its customers or clients. Costs are incurred to perform these activities. For planning and control, decisions are made about areas such as pricing, program evaluation, product costing, outsourcing, and investment. Different costs are needed for different purposes. In each instance, costs are determined to help management make better decisions. When incurred, costs are initially reviewed and accumulated by some classification system. Costs with Continue reading
Business Finance
Business Finance is that business activity which is concerned with the acquisition and conservation of capital funds in meeting financial needs and overall objectives of business enterprises.
Role and Significance of Budgetary Control
Budgetary control has the existence of broad and narrow sense. Broad budgetary control sees the entire budget system as a control system, which it is the formation of a prior, during and after the whole process control system. Through the budget preparation, budget evaluation, reward and punishment by monitoring of budget execution. Narrow budgetary control prepares a good budget as a basis for performance management and standards on a regular basis to compare actual performance with the budget analyze differences in the results and take corrective measures, which is mainly referring to something in the process of budget implementation in the monitoring of behavior. According to control activities, budget control includes target control, process control and system control, while the Continue reading
Participative Budgeting – Definition, Advantages and Disadvantages
Participative budgeting is the situation in which budget are designed and set after input from subordinate managers, instead of merely being imposed. The purpose of participation in budget setting is to divide responsibility to subordinate managers and set a form of personal ownership on the final budget. The budgeting approach in which the subordinate participates in budget setting, they provide their own information that the supervisors use to formulate the self-imposed budget or participative budget. Organization performance is expected to be well improved by making it possible for the supervisor to allocate the resources more efficiently. According to the information provided by the subordinate, the right resources-allocation decisions are making, the participative budgeting will improve the organization performance. Participation in Continue reading
Modes of Short-Term Working Capital Financing
The excess of the amount of working capital over permanent working capital is known as variable or short-term working capital. The amount of such working capital keeps on fluctuating from time to time on the basis of business activities. It may again be sub-divided into seasonal and special working capital. Seasonal working capital is required to meet the seasonal demands of busy periods occurring at stated intervals. On the other hand, special working capital is required to meet extra-ordinary needs for contingencies. The main sources of short-term working capital are as follows: 1. Indigenous Bankers Private moneylenders and other country bankers used to be the only source of finance prior to the establishment of commercial banks. They used to charge Continue reading
Modes of Long-Term Working Capital Financing
Working capital refers to that part of the total capital employed which has been invested for the financing of current assets e.g. inventories, debtors, cash and bank balances, bills receivable, prepaid expenses etc. That is, total of all current assets is working capital. Firms need both a long-term (or permanent) investment in working capital and a short-term or cyclical one. The permanent working capital investment provides an ongoing positive net working capital position, that is, a level of current assets that exceeds current liabilities. This allows the firm to operate with a comfortable financial margin since short-term assets exceed short-term obligations and minimizes the risk of being unable to pay its employees, vendors, lenders, or the government (for taxes). To Continue reading
Factors Affecting Dividend Policy
Dividend is the amount paid out to the shareholders out of the earnings for equity shareholders. That part of the total earnings, which is not paid out as dividend, is the retained earnings (RE), which is ploughed back or reinvested in the business. The higher the amount of dividend, the lower the retained earnings and vice versa. Retained profit increases the long-term capital base of the company and thus increases the potential of future earning capacity. On the other hand, the higher the dividend, the higher the earnings of the equity shareholders at present. The question is what is the trade-off between present earnings and higher future earnings; what is the optimum dividend policy. As in other matters, that dividend Continue reading