Management and finance Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Management and finance - Essay Example Managers should focus on what should be done in order to avoid variance in the future rather than concentrating on actions to correct variances in the budget. Management determines the performance of the organization by conducting budget control or variance analysis (Ramji & Geoffrey, 2002, p. 21). These approaches support management by exception by the fact that it identifies critical areas of organization performance which does not follow the management expectations. Although budget is very essential in the organization, the success of the organization is determined by the effort of the management to in making decisions that will ensure the attainment of the organization’s goals. A. Behavioural issues in budgetary reporting system When actual performance of the business differs from the planned or budgeted activities this is referred to as variance. Variance may be favourable if it shows gain or beneficial position such as an increase in actual income or profits or a decreas e in actual expenditure than the standard cost (Sherman, 2011, p. 87). On the other hand, variance may be termed unfavourable if the actual cost exceeds standard cost, or if actual profit/income falls below the budgeted income/profit. It is the cause and consequences of variance that matters, and whether the variance is favourable or unfavourable (Hampton, 2009, p. 57). The management should work to establish the cause of variances and assess the impact of the variance in the organization because not all adverse variances are detrimental to the business and not all favourable variances are beneficial to the organization. Material variance refers to the differences between the actual materials used in producing actual outputs and materials that were expected to be used during the planning process (Weiss, 2006, p. 102). Material variance may occur for various reasons. For example, the difference may be due to the actual purchase price of the materials being less or more than the expec ted price in which case the purchasing department may be held liable. On the other hand, this variance may be due to less or more materials being used during the manufacturing process, and in this case, the production department will be held responsible. Labour variance is the difference between the actual cost of labour and the budgeted expenditure. The actual expenditure is usually greater or is less than the budgeted expenditure due to various factors. For example, the actual rate does not correspond to the budgeted cost because it is either below or higher than the expected rate (Hampton, 2009, p. 71). In addition, the actual idle time of the workers is more or less than the budgeted time while the actual productivity of the workers differs from the budgeted efficiency. These factors influence the actual cost of labour resulting to significant differences in cost of labour from the planned cost of labour. In the case study, the estimated output was ninety five thousands units wh ile the actual output was ninety thousands units. This created a variance of five thousand units in the organizations output. This decline in units produced could imply inefficiency of workers or machines. It could also mean that the target was too high for the organization to meet (Weiss, 2006, p. 108). The management should put effort to increase the production capacity of the organization by either increasing the efficiency of work