There are many useful resources regarding budgeting available on websites. The following activity investigates the results of a comprehensive budgeting study.

Address: http://www.accountingweb.com/whitepapers/centage_ioma.pdf, or go to www.wiley.

com/college/kimmel Instructions Go to the address above and then answer the following questions.

(a) What are cited as the two most common “pain points” of budgeting?

(b) What percentage of companies that participated in the survey said that they prepare annual budgets? Of those that prepare budgets, what percentage say that they start the budgeting process by first generating sales projections?

(c) What is the most common amount of time for the annual budgeting process?

(d) When evaluating variances from budgeted amounts, what was the most commonly defined range of acceptable tolerance levels?

(e) The study defines three types of consequences for varying from budgeted amounts. How does it describe “severe” consequences?

COMMUNICATION ACTIVITY