Zero-Based Budgeting: Spend Every Penny but Meet Your Financial Goals

If you’d like to save money to buy a house, create a “house fund” category. If you’ve never made one, getting all your numbers down (income and expenses) is your first step. You don’t just leave those numbers on the page and hope you’ll live by them. One of the major drawbacks of traditional budgeting is that the managers on purposely escalate the budget proposal so that despite elimination, they can easily achieve, what they desire. On the other hand, zero-based budgeting involves a comprehensive analysis of the budget proposal and thus if the managers make immaterial adjustments so as to achieve what they want, are probably exposed. Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, a UK private company limited by guarantee (“DTTL”), its network of member firms, and their related entities.

The practice also favors areas that achieve direct revenues or production, as their contributions are more easily justifiable than in departments such as client service and research and development. Julia Kagan is a financial/consumer journalist and former senior editor, personal finance, of Investopedia. The article presented to you give a brief description of the differences between traditional and zero-based budgeting, take a read. Traditional Budgeting incorporates the previous year expenditure in the new budget proposal and only increments are a matter of debate. On the other hand, zero-based budgeting is based on the assumption that every rupee of the expenditure, should be justified. Ultimately, adopting a zero-based strategy allows you to design your own financial destiny.

What Is a Zero-Based Budget?

There are many ways to build these pilots, each of which can be customized to meet the company’s objectives. One company, for instance, is piloting a ZBB rollout across its global finance function. This approach builds capabilities within the team that will help drive the program across the enterprise while having the added benefit of helping team members achieve their existing budget targets.

Zero-based budgeting can help you figure out where the money leaks in your budget are coming from. Once you’re in tune with your spending, you can take a closer look to figure out what to keep and what you might be able to cut back on. The more you can cut, the more money you may be able to free up for debt repayment or to grow your savings account balance. So again, you could allocate part of your budget to spending, part of it to saving and part of it to paying off debt. The goal is to have your expenses, savings, and debt repayment equal your income. Since the zero-base budgeting concept requires managers to link expenditures to activities, they are forced to define the various missions of their departments – which might otherwise be poorly defined.

• Officials in the Hubei province and the DBR began looking for ways to incorporate the best parts of ZBB and form a new budgeting system that would work for their needs.
• If you want to account for every dollar you earn, then zero-based budgeting can be an option.
• Bill has no idea where his company is losing money, so he decides to start analyzing every aspect of his business.
• A large portion of spending is not included in the ZBB process, like operating expenses, personnel expenses, and government policies that start after the budget year.

Instead of waiting to see what you can and can’t afford, you can decide what you want to afford. If you want to try zero-based budgeting, there are some things you can do to improve your odds of being successful and sticking with it. Creating a zero-based budget isn’t that difficult if you have an example to follow.

Zero-based budgeting Vs. traditional budgeting

Sixty-three percent of respondents, globally, who did not conduct ZBB did not meet their cost targets, while the same is true for 58 percent of those that did use ZBB. It is more about determining a change that is applied to all such as an increase in spending by 1%. This generic nature doesn’t specify in detail how the activities are tied to the budgets making it confusing to implement.

Maintaining a zero-based budget is more complex than most traditional budgets, but its potential for savings is much higher. Zero-based budgeting is much more than building a budget from zero. In traditional budgeting, companies start with the previous period’s budget as a template and then build upon it. Usually, each new budget increases incrementally compared to the previous period’s budget, and companies only need to justify new expenses. Zero-based budgeting (ZBB) is a method of budgeting in which all expenses must be justified for each new period.

In simple terms, it is the budgeting technique in which the cost component needs specific justification as if the activities relating to the budget were carried on for the first time. In the absence of approval, the budget allowance is zero. If a zero-based strategy sounds like your speed, buckle up. It requires more upkeep than a traditional budget, but it also has huge potential for saving. Keep reading to learn about zero-based budgeting, what it takes and how it can change your financial trajectory.

Make a new budget (before the month begins).

When people sit down to make traditional budgets (also called incremental budgets), they typically start by listing out their current expenses or by building from the previous year’s budget. These approaches can be problematic because they don’t require the budgeter to ask whether historical expenses are actually necessary to maintain. A lazy approach to budgeting will never suffice because a budget can act as an outline and a solid plan to take your business in the right direction. Accounting software enables businesses to better manage their budgets and allocate funds for maximum cost savings. TallyPrime is an accounting software solution that enables you to create budgets for groups, cost centres, and ledger accounts. You can create a hierarchy of budgets with a master budget and sub-budgets underneath it.

By questioning the budgets of each department, ideas for innovations have more room. Even if this makes planning more time-consuming, it can provide important insights that can positively influence the company’s success. The biggest advantage of zero-based actual deferral & actual contribution percentage tests definition budgeting is that it enables cost control. By not using the previous year’s budgets as a baseline, expenditure can be better scrutinised. Those responsible are thus forced to justify their expenditures, which in turn contributes to cost optimisation.

Five myths (and realities) about zero-based budgeting

One global food producer did a country-by-country rollout because it had four or five different business units, with a lot of synergies, that had never really been integrated or captured. Another firm might find that deploying ZBB in only one region or one business unit suits its needs. What usually ends up happening, however, is that companies that start with a limited scope see great impact from ZBB and often decide to use it more broadly. In a zero-based budget, the company analyzes every expense/aspect of the business one by one. This is referred to as starting from a “zero base.” While zero-based budgeting examines all expenses, traditional budgeting only examines proposed new expenses.

As an accounting practice, zero-based budgeting offers a number of advantages including focused operations, lower costs, budget flexibility, and strategic execution. When managers think about how each dollar is spent, the highest revenue-generating operations come into greater focus. Meanwhile, lowered costs may result as zero-based budgeting may prevent the misallocation of resources that may happen over time when a budget grows incrementally.

Difference Between Traditional Budgeting and Zero-Based Budgeting

Businesses can implement zero-based budgeting for growth as it can act as a growth booster. It does this by allocating the unproductive costs to productive endeavors. Small businesses and growing businesses can effectively use zero-based budgeting for better growth in the short term.

According to Jun Ma, a professor at the University of Nebraska, the beginning years of ZBB in Hubei were a bit rocky as the DBR had not yet been implemented in all the state departments in Hubei. Only a few departments implemented the budgeting system, and the results of multiple departments using multiple budgeting systems were not good. It slowly became clear that using ZBB in a traditional sense would not work out.

Zero-based budgeting: Process

You can also check out these budget percentages and averages. If instead of paying some salaries, the company’s management determines that it can substitute technology at a lower cost, then adjustments to the budget are made accordingly. All expenses must be justified in order to qualify to be placed in the budget. You can repeat expense categories and amounts every month or mix it up. If you come in under budget in a certain category at the end of the month, add the remaining amount to next month’s budget or move it to another category, such as your emergency fund.

When you’re listing your expenses, follow the list we gave you earlier. If you get paid more than you planned, add that extra money to your Baby Step or another budget line. But again, this method locks you into a strategy that might not fit the money goal you’re in the middle of!