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Budgeting
The act of making a statement of financial position and priorities, which takes the organization's funds and allocates them to support its goals, functions, programs, or projects. The most common form is the line-item budget, which allocates funds to broad categories of expenditure such as travel, salaries, and equipment. A criticism of line-item budgeting is that the categories do not clearly identify specific projects, programs, or functions. An alternative is a performance budget, which allocates funds to specific goals of the organization and enables clear identification of inputs and outputs. Another alternative is the program budget, which allocates funds to actions that achieve the organizational goals and can encompass multiple units of the organization. Zero-based budgeting is a technique in which each unit defends its ...