1.1 Introduction
A budget is an estimate or plan of income and expenditure that helps most companies, country and Organizations in taking care of projects mapped out annual. For this reason it is of importance that there should be a reliable system of budget analysis. A good budget analysis is a process of breaking the whole budget into separate units or parts with the sole aim of identifying and studying the structure of each part of the budgets, so that the budget would be error free, and in case of error provide possible solutions to them. The process of preparing the budget forces the executive to become better administrator. It puts planning in the first key and budgeting primary attention directing because it helps managers to focus in the operating problem early enough. For effective planning or action, budgeting is usually been as an integral of various plans and providing feedback for the actual result.
As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.
1.2 Background of Study
Many years back, individuals, government and even companies have tried to regulate income and expenditure, but this was not as possible as expected due to certain problem and constraints. Better suggestions result to these approaches since most of the available resources at that time were not judiciously used. As a result of one problem or the other such as: Non-actualization of some basic needs of the masses, increase in population of the country. Notwithstanding, the careful planning and execution of budgets in Nigeria, the targets are hardly met while most budgets end up in difficult.
Budgeting is the accepted basis for profit, planning and financial control. It has been practice effectively and profitably by many progressive companies who generally regard it not simply as a procedure but as one of the more important of process of management. Budgeting is one of the management tools that force manager to perform according to a given level of expectation. It has become a normal thing for us as citizens of a country like Nigeria to wait for, the president to release the yearly national budgets, but very little of us even know what the budget actually means.
A look at a brief history of the how comes of budget. In January 1993 the African concord newspaper stated the budgets started in Britain when then king asked for reports on the income and expenditure of the country in order to check fraudulent activities of their government, this was as a result of the country’s growing population inability of those in charge to specify a given project at a given place and time, uncompleted project which were paid for and complaints laid by citizens of Britain were all the things that brought about the need for budgets.
In other-word a budget helps managers manage and it can be said that having a budget has more advantages then it has any disadvantages. However the fact remains that notwithstanding the careful planning and execution of an organization’s budgets in Nigeria, the targets are still hardly met by any one organization while most budget even end up not being implemented at all. This work therefore, attempts to take a look at the methods adopted for budgets analysis or would be likely adopted for budgets analysis in an. Organization like the Enugu state ministry of finance.
1.3 Statement of Problem
Investigation revealed that it is easy to note that budget analysis entails large volume of work and a whole lot of calculation. This makes the job very difficult a task to go by the method of information storage and retrieval processing of accumulated figures is not an easy task in places where there is no sophisticated method of budget analysis.
Inefficient and insufficient records will always result to a poor and inaccurate budget. The fact that humans cant tackle the ambiguous calculations and complex allocation involved in budget analysis easily without the help from computer this is also a delay factor for the releasing of an accurate budget statement.
1.4 Aim and Objectives of the Study
The aim of the study is to design and implement a Computerized Budget Analysis System. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows to develop an application software that will:
- Consider the method adopted by the ministry of finance on budgeting;
- Check and determine their approaches to budgets analysis between specific dates;
- Determine the problems usually faced by the organization in managing their finances;
- Take care of the above problems and set up a sample budget for future use; and
- Make adequate finding and necessary recommendations after analyzing their budget by checking the system between specific dates.
1.5 Significance of Study
Budget analysis is very important with our everyday life as it is also very important for us as humans to have daily budgets which guide our spending so also it is important at the end of the day to give an account of such spending which is in order ward an analysis of our expenditure. This is an important move for every organization. For an organization to survive it must plan ahead the amount it will receive and how it will allocate the money to different departments of such an organization and how such money should be spent. This is budgeting and the analysis is just a step to make sure it works.
For government organization like the given case study, this work could serve as an eye opener to them by carefully exposing that problems inherent in budgets analysis and recommending the solution this would help them to avoid wasteful spending through budgets deficits. Hence this budget analysis should be of immense importance to government, institutions and even individuals.
This study will be of immense benefit to other researchers who intend to know more on this study and can also be used by non-researchers to build more on their research work. This study contributes to knowledge and could serve as a guide for other study.
1.6 Scope of Study
The scope of the research is focused on the Design and Implementation of Computerized Budget Analysis System.
1.7 Limitations of the Study
During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:
- Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
- Establishment Policies: Establishment policies posed a serious limitation as most staffs are not ready to release information needed for this project work. There were lots of information needed from the staffs of this institution to enhance the study which took them time to release or they did not release at all for security purposes, hence the scope was reduced.
- Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
- Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
- Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet).
1.8 Definition of Terms
Budget: This is an estimate or plan of income and expenditure that are made annually by the government in charge of revenue.
Budget Analysis: This is the process of breaking the whole budgets into separate units or parts with the sole aim of identifying and studying the structure of each part of the budget so that we can detect errors, and possible solutions to such errors.
