Find Terms by Topic: Financial Systems

The control or management of a governmental unit in accordance with an approved budget for the purpose of keeping expenditures within the limitations of available appropriations and available revenues.

The Management of tangible or intangible assets held and used in state operations, which have a service life of more than one year and meet the state's capitalization policy. Capital assets of the state include land, infrastructure, and improvements to land, buildings, leasehold improvements, vehicles, furnishings, equipment, collections, and all other tangible and intangible assets that are used in state operations

A method of accounting which provides for accumulating and recording of all the elements of cost incurred to accomplish a purpose, to carry on an activity or operation, or to complete a unit of work or a specific job. Cost accounting approach concerned with matching costs with activities (called cost drivers) that cause those costs. It is a more sophisticated kind of absorption-costing and replaces labor based costing system. ABC states that (1) products consume activities, (2) it is the activities (and not the products) that consume resources, (3) activities are the cost drivers, and (4) that activities are not necessarily based on the volume of production. Instead of allocating costs to cost centers (such as service delivery, marketing, finance), ABC allocates direct and indirect costs to activities such as processing an order, attending to a customer complaint, or delivering a service

Management of cost related activities achieved by collecting, analyzing, evaluating, and reporting cost information used for budgeting, estimating, forecasting, and monitoring costs. Cost control typically includes (1) investigative procedures to detect variance of actual costs from budgeted costs, (2) diagnostic procedures to ascertain the cause(s) of variance, and (3) corrective procedures to effect realignment between actual and budgeted costs

A ledger containing the accounts in which are recorded, in detail or in summary, all transactions of the state

The composite activity of analyzing, recording, summarizing, reporting, and interpreting the financial transactions of a governmental entity

The process of preparing management reports and accounts that provide accurate and timely financial and statistical information required by managers to make day-to-day and short-term decisions. Unlike financial accounting, which produces annual reports mainly for external stakeholders, management accounting generates monthly or weekly reports for an organization's internal audiences such as department managers and the chief executive officer. These reports typically show the amount of available cash, sales revenue generated, amount of orders in hand, state of accounts payable and accounts receivable, outstanding debts, raw material and inventory, and may also include trend charts, variance analysis, and other statistics

The act of considering and making funding choices based on desired outcomes. Performance budgeting focuses on the results to be gained through investment decisions.