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Appraising mission statements: the CABBIE method

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TROUBLESOME TERMS

Finance: administration to zero budgeting

Each of the following financial terms regularly causes problems for students in exams. You may think you know gearing and profitability. But do you know them well enough to impress an examiner?

When company directors can find no way to resolve a financial crisis, they may call in administrators. These will be accountants whose job is to try to keep the business going, perhaps by selling off sections of the business, or by negotiating with landlords to try to get rent levels down. Administration almost always brings redundancies, and sometimes the business survives, though in a shrunken form.

Monthly budgets are set out with a planned figure, the actual figure and the variance between them. The variance is recorded not just as plus or minus, but shown in relation to profit. So, if costs are higher than expected, the variance is adverse. In the same way, a disappointing month’s revenues would be recorded as an adverse variance. It’s shown by an ‘A’ by the figure, for example:

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Appraising mission statements: the CABBIE method

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Workplace communication and motivation