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M3.27 Working with Costs and Budgets Essay

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M3.27 Working With Costs and Budgets

Explain the Importance of agreeing a budget and operating within it:

A budget plan is the most effective way to keep the business and its finances on track. It gives you the opportunity to review the business’ performance and any factors that are affecting or may affect your business. Also to manage your money more effectively, allocate appropriate resources, monitor performance, meet planned objectives and plan for the future.

To be most effective this has to be an ongoing process as this allows you to act quickly and proactively rather than reacting to problems after the event. It allows you to make continuous improvements based on sound financial information and enables you to make clearer …show more content…

Explain how you could gather information to be used in determining and/or revising budgets

- Income, invoices - Expenditure (variable and fixed), receipts and invoices - Accounts - Sales figures - Observation of performance - Test Marketing - Consumer surveys to identify possible demand and suitable products - Statistics - Statistical models, moving averages - Historical data - Swot and pestle for internal and external influence

You could gather all the data by the methods above to analyze a projected budget and forecasts. Then you could use ongoing data from the above to revise and monitor the budgets on a regular basis.

Explain the concepts of fixed and variable costs and break even:

Fixed costs are what it costs a company to run before they make any products irrespective of the level of activity e.g. rent & rates, insurance, salaries, utilities.

Variable costs are expenses directly associated with the product or service e.g. raw materials, components, packaging.

Break even is when your income is equal to your expenditure (total costs: fixed + variable)

Explain how basic cost statements and standard costs are used in your workplace, explaining their purpose and nature and how they are used to control cost

Standard costs are “a predetermined cost which is calculated from management’s standards of efficient operations and the relevant necessary expenditure” Chartered

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