Sales Volume Fall Below Target example essay topic

Accounting A) The budget at Henigen Corporation is an imposed "top down" budget which fails to consider the need for realistic data and the human interaction essential to an effective budgeting / control process. One cannot know whether or not there are any realistic goals for this company because the president has not given any basis for his goals. Participation of employees in preparation of the budget is minimal and limited to mechanical gathering and manipulation of data. Implementation of the budget will show little eagerness. The budgeting process is the merging of the requirements of all facets of the company on a basis of sound judgment and equity. These specific examples of poor procedures other than the approach and goals are listed below...

The sales by product line should be based upon and accurate sales forecast of potential market. As a result, the sales by product line should have been developed first to derive the sales target rather than the reverse... Production costs probably would be the easiest and most certain costs to estimate. One could estimate the sales volume needed to cover manufacturing costs plus the cost of other aspects of the operation if they were given variable and fixed production costs. Marketing costs and corporate office expenses cannot be exactly set before the above is accomplished...

The first meeting between the vice president of finance, executive vice president, marketing manager and production manager should be held earlier. This meeting is held to late in the budgeting process. B) Henigen Corporation should think about considering the adoption of a "bottom up" budget process. This would mean that the people responsible for performance under the budget would participate in the decisions by which the budget is established. Also, this approach requires initial and continuing involvement of sales, financial, and production personnel to define sales and profit goals which are practical within the constraints under which management operates. Although this may take an extreme amount of time, the approach should produce a more acceptable, honest, and workable goal-control mechanism.

Also, it provides for goal comparison possibilities for individuals and departments in the firm. The sales forecast should be developed taking into consideration internal sales forecasts as well as external factors. The costs within the departments should be divided into fixed and variable, discretionary and non discretionary. C) When sales volume falls below budget, the functional areas should not necessarily be expected to cut costs. Because the time frame is short enough, many costs are relatively fixed in amount. For the costs that are fixed, there is slight optimism for a reduction as a consequence of short-run changes in volume.

Then again, the functional areas should be expected to cut costs should sales volume fall below target when, control is exercised over the costs within their function, budgeted costs were more than adequate for the originally targeted sales, budgeted costs vary to some extent with changes in sales, and there are discretionary costs which can be delayed or omitted with no serious effect on the department..