 In this presentation, we will discuss the question of why budget? In other words, what are the benefits of budgeting? One of the primary objectives is to have a future orientation, a future analysis, a future look to give everybody in the company an idea of where the company is going in general and then a map in terms of how are we going to get to that future objective. This seems obvious, but if you take a look at different departments, it's not as obvious as we might think because part of a company's objective is to divide tasks up by department and different departments are really geared towards what they're doing on a day-to-day type basis. So it's management's job then to have that future orientation, to be looking into the future, to be planning that endpoint, to be planning where the company is going, what's the direction of the company from an overarching type of standpoint and then help the others to see that overarching standpoint within different departments so that each department, although they are looking for the day-to-day goals and you'll note that many supervisors that are working within a particular department are really managing the day-to-day. They're trying to get through the day, manage all the problems that happen on a day-to-day basis. It's not really the management's job all the time of a particular department to take the step back and have that big picture vision. That's what the upper management is there to do, to have that big picture vision and then align all the management together with that in order to apply that big picture vision. However, we do want to have everybody in the company to have a glimpse and have participation be able to see what that big picture is so that when we go into those day-to-day tasks, when we go into the things that we got to do each day, when we solve those problems each day, we have at least in the back of our mind the big picture focus and we can take actions that are in alignment with the big picture focus. Even if possibly they don't line up with the exact policy that we are looking at or the exact rule or if there is no rule for one set or circumstance that happens, if we have a big picture focus, a big picture view, then people that are managing particular departments can then say, okay, I know what to do within this situation because it's in alignment, it's in congruity with our big picture goals and objectives. Another big objective is to communicate the plans with the organization. So we want to be able to have the plans and oftentimes we think of top management coming together with a strategic plan that they're then going to implement. But in order to implement the plan, we really need to be able to communicate the plan and the communication of the plan will have a lot of different effects as we go into this process. Note when we have the budget as well, the budgeting process should be a communication project in and of itself because that helps with the flow of ideas, with the flow of communication both up from the bottom up to management as well from the top management on down in terms of the communication of the final direction that we can then be clear on and going forward and be able to put together the steps that will be necessary in order to move forward in an efficient way. Therefore, the creation of the budget should be one that has communication with that creation so everybody feels like they have their input in the budget, that they're part of the budget, they're part of the plan and the execution of the plan then they are personally invested in. Once the plan has been made, then it's the job of management to clearly define what the plan is once the budget committee has come up with the plan so that everybody is fully aware of it, everybody can be in congruity with it and everybody can take steps along the way in the future as the future unfolds in accordance with the steps that have been laid out with the plan with the budget. The budget should also make those long-term strategic plans into more short-term financial plans so it's going to be the job of management to have an idea of what the long-term plan for the company is, what's the five-year, what's the 10-year plan for the company, those overarching plans, the objectives, the goals of the company, the mission statement of the company and then break those down into smaller chunks because the smaller chunks are the actual roadmap that we can see. We can see only part of the road as we go forward and therefore we need to zoom in on that part of the road so we are conscious of what we are doing, we're focused in on the steps that we need to take going forward while keeping in mind especially upper management keeping in mind but also communicating to the rest of the company what the overarching goal, what the five-year goal, what the 10-year goal is, we want to have the overarching vision of where the company is going but then the budget of course is there to break that down into digestible chunks, chunks that we can then see clearly going forward, chunks that people within the company then know and can use in order to make the steps and decisions in the immediate future in the next month, in the next year, in the next week, in the next day. Another objective of the budget is to provide a benchmark that we can then use to measure actual performance against, so in other words when we make the budget we're saying