Master Budget

The master budget is a summary of company's plans that sets specific targets for sales, production, distribution and financing activities. It generally culminates in a cash budget, a budgeted income statement, and a budgeted balance sheet. In short, this budget represents a comprehensive expression of management's plans for future and how these plans are to be accomplished. It usually consists of a number of separate but interdependent budgets. One budget may be necessary before the other can be initiated. One budget estimate effects other budget estimates because the figures of one budget is usually used in the preparation of other budget. This is the reason why these budgets are called interdependent budgets (Horgren, 2008).

The budgeting process usually begins with a sales budget. The sales budget reflects forecasted sales volume and is influenced by previous sales patterns, current and expected economic conditions, activities of competitors, and so forth. The sales budget is complimented by an analysis of the resulting expected cash collections. Sales often occur on account, so there can be a delay between the time of a sale and the actual conversion of the transaction to cash. For the budget to be useful, careful consideration must also be given to the timing and pattern of cash collections. Some advantages of a master budget are that it can give an idea of where a company wants to go and what it has to do in order to get there. It will also allow the company to realistically project future cash flows which in turn would help in getting certain types of financing. Some disadvantages of a master budget include the time involved in producing such a budget. This is primarily the reason a smaller company may not make a master budget if the company has a very small managerial staff (Horgren, 2008).