“Zero-based budgeting” is an approach to plan and prepare the budget from the scratch. Zero-based budgeting starts from zero, rather than a traditional budget that is based on previous budgets.
With this budgeting approach, you need to justify each and every expense before adding it to the actual budget. The primary objective of zero-based budgeting is the reduction of unnecessary cost by looking at where costs can be cut.
To create a zero base budget involvement of the employees is required. You can ask your employees what kind of expenses the business will have to bear and figure out where you can control such expenses. If a particular expense fails to benefit the business, the same should be axed from the budget.
Difference between Zero-based budgeting & Traditional Budgeting
Advantage of zero-based budgeting
Efficiency: Zero-based Budgeting helps a business in the allocation of resources efficiently (department-wise) as it does not look at the previous budget numbers, instead looks at the actual numbers
Budget inflation: As mentioned above every expense is to be justified. Zero-based budget compensates the weakness of incremental budgeting of budget inflation.
Coordination and Communication: Zero-based budgeting provides better coordination and communication within the department and motivation to employees by involving them in decision-making.
Reduction in redundant activities: This approach leads to identify optimum opportunities and more cost-efficient ways of doing things by eliminating all the redundant or unproductive activities
Disadvantage of zero-based budgeting
High Manpower Turnover: The foundation of zero-based budgeting itself is a zero. Budget under this concept is planned and prepared from the scratch and require the involvement of a large number of employees. Many departments may not have adequate human resource and time for the same.
Time-Consuming: This Zero-based budgeting approach is a highly time-intensive for a company to do annually as against incremental budgeting approach, which is a far easier method.
Lack of Expertise: Providing an explanation for every line item and every cost is a problematic task and requires training for the managers.
Conclusion
Zero-based budgeting targets at presenting true expenses to be incurred by a department. Although this budgeting method is time-consuming, this is a more appropriate way of budgeting. This includes all-inclusive analysis of the budget proposal and if the managers make irrelevant variations so as to achieve what they want, they are probably exposed.
