Monitoring and Controlling Budgets:

The preparation of budgets is only part of the budget cycle.  Once set, an organisation should actively monitor actual revenue and expenditure against the budget plan.

The most important method of monitoring and controlling expenditure to budget is through the process of variance analysis. By way of background however, one must understand how transactions are recorded and stored in the accounting system to enable comparisons between actual expenditure and budgeted expenditure to be conducted.